


Tumblr MSR Prompts (admiralty-xfd)

by admiralty



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-04
Updated: 2020-03-28
Packaged: 2020-04-07 21:02:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 30
Words: 30,734
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19093087
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/admiralty/pseuds/admiralty
Summary: Various works from prompts I received ontumblr. These will all be random and not chronological. Updated as I receive them. MSR. Enjoy!Some chapters are explicit, I will put warnings above those.This list is getting too long, so I'll leave the latest ten prompts listed.21. Mistletoe22. Mulder's spot23. Elevator kiss24. Heading West, Heading Nowhere25. The Toothbrush26. “Why are you so jealous?”27. "The baby's coming."28. surprise kiss29. First Kiss30. **NEW** "I dreamed of you last night."





	1. Sex and Toe Tags

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Eavesdropping/ "You embarrassed me!" requested by @MonikaFileFan
> 
> This chapter contains explicit material.

Cold. Silver. Sterile.

Sharp, hard edges clashing against the soft, malleable flesh of the dead.

One moment she’s filling out information for a toe tag and the next he is behind her, warmth pressed flush against her body. Life seeking her out, finding her here in this cold chamber of death.

His hand finds its way to her stomach as he hovers near her ear, his hot breath warming her. Dr. Dana Scully has always been comfortable in the autopsy bay, it was her domain long before the first time Mulder would even have considered behaving this way. It isn’t the kind of environment in which she typically thinks about sex, especially when she’s working.

But she’s thinking about it now. Mulder is her weakness. He always has been.

“Are you finished yet?” he whispers, more softly than necessary. He caps this question with a hard nip to her earlobe and she stiffens.

“Can you wait?” she asks. She doesn’t want him to wait and he knows it.

His hand slides up her body to find her face mask dangling around her neck  and his fingers wrap around it, pulling it off her. She hears it crinkle and her body responds to the noise as if he’d uttered something filthy into her ear instead. It doesn’t take much with him; the crinkle of a paper mask is the same as a promise, one that makes her tremble with anticipation.

“Mulder, I-“

She trails off. _I what?_ She doesn’t plan to protest. He can do whatever he wants to her, and she will never brook refusal.

“You completely dismissed me out there, in front of the coroner,” he says quietly. He sounds disappointed, almost sad. She knows it had been a mistake. She’d regretted it as soon as the words left her mouth.

His comment had been benign, harmless. But this aspect of their relationship is still so new. She hadn’t been planning for it to bleed over into her professional world and she wasn’t sure if she’d liked it. Outing them as partners who were sexually involved in front of another professional had taken her off guard.

His hand slips beneath the waist of her scrub pants, inside her underwear, directly between her legs, and as he curls his middle finger up inside her without any preamble at all she lets out a shuddering sigh.

“I was trying to do my job. You embarrassed me,” she manages to get out. “This is exactly why we said no fraternizing, Mulder.” She’s trying to be firm but her traitorous body is responding to his every movement. Her legs part automatically, granting him all the access he needs as her hands slap against the hard metal surface of the gurney, gripping the edges.

“What exactly embarrassed you, Scully?” he asks. “That a man could find you so arousing in this context or that the man was me?”

She can’t think, she can barely breathe. None of it seems to matter now.

“We’re never going to see that coroner again, Scully,” he whispers into her ear. “Who cares what she thinks?”

She knows he’s right. Maintaining a professional veneer in front of strangers has always been important to Scully but is it, anymore? Right now, when she has Fox Mulder completely at her disposal?

“You’re right,” she breathes, eyes closed.

“Who cares what she… _hears_ ,” he continues. And it’s at this precise moment she stops caring, too.

His movements are slow at first but soon he’s swirling around inside her, making her rise onto the balls of her feet and throw her head back against his shoulder _ohhhmygodmulder_ as she thinks it, maybe moans it. His breath is hot against her neck and she can feel him smiling triumphantly as she writhes beneath his skilled touch. His tongue darts out and chases the tendons along the back of her neck, its journey brief but effective. Showing no mercy whatsoever he inserts another finger inside her and the fluorescent lights above her disappear behind her own flashpoint as he gently lifts her up, her feet barely touching the ground.

“Jesus…” she breathes, sweat beads forming at her temple. _Jesus._ He always makes her come so fast, _so fast…_ it’s not fair on one hand, and perfectly welcomed on the other. Apropos. Cosmic karma for years of waiting. She never has to wait long anymore.

His thumb moves relentlessly against her clit even though he must know she’s still recovering. He doesn’t plan to let her rest, he plans to wear her out. It’s just like him. He behaves the same in the bedroom as he does anywhere.

His other hand reaches in front of her, inside her top, into her bra. She recoils briefly; his hand is chilled from the air in the room.

“Cold… it’s cold in here…” she says, still woozy from her first orgasm.

“It won’t be for long.”

He yanks the cup of her bra down along with her shirt, exposing her hardened bud to the frigid air. His hand covers it for a moment but only a moment. He removes his hand and drags his index finger softly across her nipple, back and forth. His other hand is working madly inside her underwear and she’s amazed at how quickly this routine autopsy has turned into the actual best day of her life.

Her arousal is beyond measure, but the cold in the air is making this all tortuous. A sharp intake of breath hisses between her teeth as he flicks and pinches and _fuck_ _does it feel good._

“Do you like that, Scully?”

She can’t speak. She nods. _Yes_ , is all she needs to communicate.

He spins her around and backs her up against the edge of the gurney, a cold line pressing into her lower back above her waistline, and his hot mouth descends upon her aching nipple, heat radiating all the way down to her very core. There’s no more pain, only pleasure. The immense, divine pleasure of Mulder’s beautiful lips suckling at her.

She went so many years listening to him work magic with that mouth of his. Why did she wait so long to feel it?

He removes his hand from her pants and pulls the neck of her scrub shirt down just enough to free the other breast, moving back and forth between them with intensity. Her eyes roll back into her head as she arches her back, almost all the way down onto the empty gurney as her hands move to grip his scalp. She inhales his scent, his wonderful Mulder scent that once could only tease her whenever they were in close quarters; on an airplane, or reading the same file. She couldn’t breathe it in before the way she’s allowed to now. So she does, and it’s absolute heaven.

He shifts upward to kiss her deeply, his hands now supporting her back. She tries desperately to stay upright as her legs turn to jelly. She’s so, so weak. He makes her this way.

He grips the waistband of her pants and underwear together, pulling them down to her knees. She kicks her shoes off and wriggles free, virtually naked now. Suddenly her rational Scully brain activates again.

_We are on the clock._

_The coroner is just outside._

_We didn’t even lock the fucking door._

“The door, Mulder,” she says, breathless, as he lifts her onto the gurney. The cold metal makes her yelp and he lifts an eyebrow.

“One step ahead of you, Scully,” he grins. Of course he already locked it. She’s baffled at how she hadn’t even thought of it before now.

Cognizant of her nakedness she throws her arms around his neck and pulls him close to her body, the fabric of his dress shirt against her front the only source of warmth.

“It’s freezing in here,” she says, and her teeth chatter more with anxious excitement than discomfort. “I want to get warm.” She peels off his clothing piece by piece, ripping his shirt open with gusto, buttons flying everywhere, _plink plink_ against the cold storage doors.

“You tore my shirt,” he says, unnecessarily.

“Shut up, Mulder,” she says huskily. “I’ll fix it for you later.”

“You sew, Scully?” he grins. She doesn’t want to tell him she doesn’t, not really, but how different can it be from sewing up dead bodies? Surely a mood killer, though. So she grins and pulls him close, taking his bottom lip securely between her own. He groans as he furiously unbuckles his belt, sliding everything off in one fell swoop, and then they are two warm bodies tangled together on a single gurney, emulating death but oh, so alive.

He settles on top of her, and although her back feels only cold metal her body is warm, hot, on fire with only him. She wraps her legs around him and as he slowly pushes inside her she arches up further, angling her body to accept as much of him as she possibly can.

“Ow,” she says as her scapula aggressively presses against the hard metal surface.

“Too much?” Mulder asks with a grimace. He’s not small and he knows it. She loves that he knows it.

“No,” she smiles, shaking her head. “Never enough.”

He grins and leans down to taste her lips again and she clutches two fistfuls of his ass, pulling him in tight. She looks into his eyes, so dilated with lust she can see the reflection of the bay around them.

“Move,” she commands.

He does.

The gurney creaks and moves as he pumps and she marvels at how good he feels, how right this is. They fit together so perfectly she wants to weep. Why haven’t they done this in every single autopsy bay they’ve ever been in? It seems like such a fucking waste.

Overcome with ecstasy her fingernails scratch over his shoulders and down his pectorals much harder than she intends, leaving twin trails of red grooves along his chest. His very own Y-incision, she muses. He yelps, gripping her wrist hard, and in retaliation leans down to bite the tender flesh at her collarbone.

The cold beneath her and the heat above her and the clanging of metal overwhelms her senses and she starts to moan _yeah, oh god…_ although… _the noise they must be making_...

His hand drifts down to her thigh and he slowly unbends her leg, ghosting his fingers up and up until her leg is straight up in the air and he’s hitting her at some kind of angle that feels so fucking good it’s as unexplainable as whatever X File they’re here for. It doesn’t matter. Right now she believes in the paranormal because he’s making it happen between her thighs.

“ _Mul-_ “ she begins to scream but he leans down and quiets her cries with his lips, and as he moves his mouth over his she hears the echo of her own cry within the bay. Surely someone can hear them, surely someone is listening. But she’s surfing the crest of her release and has no desire to stop; her last vestige of rationality left the building with her inhibitions.

They must finish. They will finish.

“Shhh…” Mulder whispers against her lips. She’s so close, and he’s frantically thrusting, chasing his own conclusion, when he suddenly finds it, spilling into her with a grunt and more whispers into her ear, all the things she loves to hear from him in these moments. She’s past the point of no return and at the moment his hand darts down to help her along she follows, breathing heavily as he kisses her eyelids and cradles her head in his hands.

The look they share now is like so many others that have come before, different while he’s inside her but still the same, still exactly the same as that night they laughed in the rain and the mud together all those years ago. He brushes a strand of sweaty hair out of her eyes and drags his lips softly across her forehead as she wraps her arms around his neck, hugging him close. He is her blanket, keeping her warm and safe in this cold, bleak space.

“We should go,” she says as he pulls a medical tarp over them.

“Just a minute,” he says. “I just want to hold you for a minute, okay?”

She smiles in contentment and lets him slow down. She loves when he slows down. It’s the never-ending complexity of Fox Mulder, his ability to slow down when she needs him to despite his tendency to barrel ahead as his gut leads him forward, unstoppable. She never thought him capable of stopping for anything until they started doing this, started being with each other this way and now he stops. Now he holds her tenderly, careful while she’s here in his arms.

_I wouldn’t know what I’d be missing._

She knows he’s aware now, of what he’d miss if he didn’t stop. So she lets him hold her and they lie here, suspended in time in a place where time does not matter.

 

***

 

“What the hell are you doing, George?”

The assistant pulled away from the door, more embarrassed at being caught than for anything he’d heard in the last ten minutes.

“Those FBI agents are fucking in there,” he said, as if that explained everything.

“You’re disgusting,” the coroner replied, her ponytail swishing behind her as she continued down the hall. George watched her for a second, shrugged, then pressed his ear back to the door. This job sucked anyway.  

 


	2. Gibson and Scully

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gibson Praise hears Scully's thoughts after she shoots the ABH in "Without."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PROMPT #2 from @gaycrouton
> 
> Hi, excuse me, I adore you. I absolutely LOVE your chapter in "First Time For Everything" where you explored Gibson 'hearing' Mulder miss Scully in the bunker SO my prompt is - you know that scene from early season 8 where Scully has to kill the shapeshifter and then breaks down and bawls in Doggett's arms? - Gibson was standing so still and looked shook while staring at Scully and I want to hear your take on what he could 'hear' from Scully in that moment. Lol this is so long, I'm the worst lol
> 
> This one's for you, Nicole! xo

 

 

Confusion is the first thing Gibson hears.

The man with blue eyes holds Agent Scully tightly, and his thoughts don’t know where to go. They are only fragments; no beginning and no end, just bits and pieces of things he cannot or will not understand. The lengths his mind go to now to justify what he’s seen are far more incredible than anything he’s actually witnessed.

Confusion is tricky for a mind reader. It’s hard to know what the person truly feels, and where they will land.

Fear is much easier. This is what he hears from Agent Scully. At first he thinks she’s afraid of the bounty hunter, or of having almost killed her friend. Or maybe that she’ll never see her partner again. These are the things that anyone would assume watching her now.

But then, as happens on occasion, he hears a very specific thought.

_How can I do this, Mulder? How will I protect our child without you? I can’t keep anyone safe. I can’t even keep Gibson safe._

For a moment he feels incredibly guilty for saying what he did before, for putting that responsibility on her. She’s always been kind to him, always. Even back when he first met her she had a softness about her, a warmth. She was interested and curious about him but that’s exactly how he knew she was a good person; she was always more concerned for his well being than anything he could possibly teach her.

 _Our child._ What child? Does she have a child with Agent Mulder?

He knew these two were in love with each other from the day he met them. It was impossible not to know. And Gibson understands love in a way no one else can. He hears all the things people do not say; the things they are dying to say but don’t, for whatever reason. And there are always lots of reasons.

He'd heard it from Agent Mulder when he first met him, the silent plea he'd repeated to himself.

_Scully can’t know, she can’t know about Diana… fuck… how am I going to explain this… she’s never going to forgive me..._

Gibson hadn’t known who any of them were at the time, but he hadn’t needed to in order to piece everything together.

_That fucking bee... why didn’t I try again sooner… why didn’t I tell Scully the truth..._

The bee part had been unclear, but not for long. When he’d been alone with Agent Scully that particular event had been explained with alarming detail. He'd tried not to listen, he really tried. But it was all she could think about.

The blue eyed agent is screaming for help as the rest of the agents trickle out of the room. Agent Scully says with her mouth “I’m fine Agent Doggett, I’m fine,” but with her mind _I am not fine. I will never be fine until I find him._

It’s easier to focus now with just the two agents in the room. He hears the fear again, and the terror. He wants it to stop. Agent Scully is a nice person, and she doesn’t deserve this. He steels himself, knowing she is not fine, knowing Agent Doggett should not leave her alone. The fear, the confusion. Two voices now. He can deal with two voices.

But then her left hand moves to her abdomen. Agent Doggett doesn’t see, but Gibson does.

And he hears another voice.

It isn’t words, it’s more of a feeling, a soothing presence that seems to calm Agent Scully. She takes deep breaths, and he can tell Agent Doggett thinks he’s calming her down but it isn’t him, it’s something else. It’s _someone_ else.

Suddenly he understands. He’s hearing her child. Mulder’s child.

“Go, help Skinner,” Agent Scully says to Agent Doggett. He helps her to her feet and with further insistence she’s fine, although Agent Doggett knows better, he begrudgingly acquiesces and leaves them alone in the room.

Gibson knows his abilities are unique to humans. Although he’s able to distinguish that which is human from that which is alien it hasn’t changed the fact that he’s always felt so, so alone. But as he looks at Agent Scully now, her hand hovering over the child he’s now aware exists, he feels less so. He’s never been able to communicate with a baby before and immediately knows this child is different, special.

Just like him.

He touches her arm. “Agent Scully?” She looks at him as if she’s noticing him there for the first time.

“Gibson… are you all right?” Her lip trembles and he can tell she’s trying to keep it together but her brain is on fire with emotion. He nods, trying to put her at ease.

“I’m so sorry, Gibson… I’m sorry I couldn’t keep you safe.”

He shakes his head. “I’m sorry I said what I did. You did the best you could.” He looks at her meaningfully. “And I know you will for your kid, too.”

She looks up at him, taken aback. “How do you…?”

“I can hear it. Right now.”

She lets out a tiny gasp and moves her hand protectively to her stomach again. “What… do you hear?”

“Just a feeling. It’s hard to describe. Safety. Comfort.”

Her eyes well up and she nods ever so slightly. She looks so, so sad, and he can hear her gratitude for telling her this. But he also hears other, more complex thoughts swirling around her brain; thoughts of despair, of heartache. Of love.

_Mulder._

“He’s looking for you too, you know,” Gibson says softly. It’s all he can give her right now: hope.

“What do you mean?”

“It’s what I heard. It’s how I know for sure it was him up there.”

Scully blinks. “What did you hear?”

Gibson shrugs. “Just your name. Just _Scully._ ”

She smiles. He doesn’t remember ever seeing her smile before, and he’s happy to be the one to have made it happen.

“Thank you, Gibson.”

She takes his arm and he leads her out of this room, the alien bounty hunter having dissolved into nothingness by now. Back to reality. But the fear is gone now. Certainty is what he hears from Agent Scully; not doubt, not hesitation. But utter certainty that her partner is alive, somewhere out there.

And she will find him.

 


	3. MSR fireworks kiss

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> PROMPT # 3 from anonymous
> 
> Can you write a short story of Mulder and Scully kissing on July 4th with fireworks in the background?
> 
> Oh, anon. This one I enjoyed. I hope you like it!

  
  
  
She hears the boom outside and the screen door slams, and she knows Mulder is already out front. She smiles at the reminder, that today is actually a holiday. He’s free now. They should celebrate independence.

She can see his silhouette through the door, perched on the top step with his back to her. Red, white and blue explode in the sky, far away but perfectly within view. She watches the show for a moment and then her eyes return to him, staring, staring. Up towards the heavens, space, all of the things that hold Mulder’s gaze. But she is certain of one thing that can pull it away.

“Happy Independence Day,” she says, sinking down onto the step to sit beside him, giving him a peck on the cheek. She takes his arm and leans against him, watching the unauthorized spectacle, knowing it probably won’t last long considering Virginia state laws.

“I forgot,” he says, his eyes never leaving the sky. The flashes illuminate the flicker in his left pupil, that thing that happens when he’s focused. “I’m still getting used to the days not being a complete blur, you know?” He still rarely leaves the house; six years into this routine it’s a tough habit to break.

“Did you celebrate it much as a family? I mean… before,” she clarifies. _Before Samantha_ remains unsaid.

He shakes his head. “Not really. My father was a bit disillusioned, I suppose, with the patriotism stuff. Now it’s easy to see why.”

Scully nods. “My father always did it up,” she says with a smile, switching gears. “Barbecues, sparklers. A bunch of the neighborhood kids on the base decorated our bikes and wagons and we had parades. They were happy times.”

“That sounds really nice, Scully,” he says softly. “I’m sorry we can’t have the same.”

She shakes her head against his shirt. It smells like laundry detergent and home. She doesn’t want to think about all they’ve lost. She only wants to think about how it makes the things they do have all the more profound.

“I don’t want the same, Mulder,” she says in reply. “What I want is right here.”

He turns to look at her for the first time. “You sure?” he asks. He asks often. She hates when he doubts any of it but she’s confident he believes her every time.

Her head moves to rest against his shoulder and her lips find the place where his t shirt meets the warm skin of his bicep. “Big time,” she mumbles against him, kissing him there almost mindlessly.

He cocks his head to the side with a smirk and leans in with purpose, and she tilts her head to meet him. Their lips touch as the fizz and crackle echo around the yard, between the dogwoods and through the high grasses. It’s hot outside even though it’s almost ten, but a breeze still weaves around their house.

His lips massage hers gently, softly at first until she knows she wants to taste him, all of him, fireworks be damned. She holds him by the face, his scruff growing in again, and she can feel the corners of her mouth turn up into a smile as they kiss.

“You don’t want to watch?” he murmurs against her mouth. He doesn’t care anymore, not really, and she knows it.

“Mm-mm,” she responds in the negative. She pulls back for a moment. “Seen one fireworks show, seen them all.”

“You could say the same about kissing,” he points out playfully. But she shakes her head.

“No… it’s definitely not the same. Fireworks have rules, boundaries. They can’t transcend the laws of science.”

“Science, huh?” he says, leaning in again. “You know I love it when you talk dirty, Scully.”

“Mmm,” she says as he kisses her again. “It’s the chemicals and certain metals creating oxidation…”

“That’s it,” he says with a grin. “Keep it going.”

“It creates an explosion,” she continues. “Any time you have a fast…” _kiss…_ “and intense burning event you’re going to get an explosion.”

“I can verify that statement,” he agrees, working his way down her neck.

“And Mulder,” she goes on, a bit excited now, “the different metals are what make the colors different. Did you know that?”

“I wish I cared,” he mumbles into her neck, moving a long strand of hair out of his path.

“Orange is from sodium, Green is from strontium…” he’s tilting her back now, softly biting her earlobe... “Red is…” _oh god…_ “copper, I think? Actually I think I got those mixed up.”

“It all sounds good to me,” he says, working at her earlobe as he whispers directly into it.

“I didn’t mention blue, though. Blue is the hardest color to make,” she explains, her eyes closing. “The temperature has to be just… right… to get the perfect hue. Certain... specific conditions have to be met. The timing has to be perfect.”

“Sounds… familiar, Scully,” he growls into her ear. It does. She’d never before had the opportunity to compare their relationship to exploding sulfur, but she can see it now.

She definitely sees it now.

“But it always works the same, without fail, Mulder. It’s a scientific process. So… predictable. Not like a kiss.”

He pulls back, his eyes black with lust. “And what’s so different about a kiss?”

She combs her fingers through his hair and looks into his eyes. The booms and crackles and whistling echo somewhere far away and the colors reflect onto his beautiful face. Red. White.

_Blue._

“Kisses have no rules,” she grins. He smiles back and goes in again, gently laying her down onto the porch. It isn’t the first time they’ve let themselves go out here and it won’t be the last.

She revels in his touch as his lips move over hers. It’s just a kiss, but it’s more. America. God. Love.

It’s just a kiss, but for them, right now, it’s everything.

  



	4. Pet name

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Scully accidentally calls Mulder a pet name (pre-relationship). She’s embarrassed and he can’t let it go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PROMPT # 4 from anon
> 
> Msr - Scully accidentally calls mulder a pet name (pre-relationship). She’s embarrassed and he can’t let it go

****  


It just slips out.

“Can you hand me that pen, babe?”

Her fingers are extended towards him, her face buried in a file at a small table in her motel room and a white-hot rush of embarrassment courses through her veins. She retracts her hand and looks up, eyes wide. Her face turns as pink as the tongue she can now see in Mulder’s mouth as his jaw drops.

She’s only known him for a few months and before that had broken up with her boyfriend so recently. It’s the only way she can account for it.

“Um. I mean… uh, Mulder.” She cringes. “Sorry.”

His face is shocked at first but soon the corner of his mouth twitches and curves upward until he’s smiling broadly, a twinkle in his eye.

“Sure… _babe_ ,” he replies playfully from the edge of her bed, handing her the pen.

“That was… I don’t know where that came from,” she mumbles as she takes it. “I think… I guess... I broke up with my boyfriend pretty recently, that’s all.”

_Babe. Babe. Oh my god, she just called Mulder “babe.”_

He nods. “And the layers keep on peeling back,” he says with a smile. “So what you’re saying is, you think I’m boyfriend material?”

She scoffs, rolling her eyes. “Don’t flatter yourself. It was a slip of the tongue.” She tries to change the subject. “So these murders, I’m not seeing a common thread so far, other than location.”

Mulder purses his lips and nods. She’s trying hard not to associate Fox Mulder with the term “babe” but it’s virtually impossible not to while he’s sitting on the edge of her bed with his sleeves rolled up, grinning at her in that dangerous way she always tries to ignore.

“I see, I see,” he says thoughtfully, tapping his index finger against his bottom lip. _That goddamn bottom lip._ “What’s your theory then, babe?” He grins again.

“Stop it,” she says. She feels her face flush again. Why is this bothering her so much?

“Stop what?” he asks, hands spread. “You started it.”

“It was an accident, okay? Can we just forget it?” She doesn’t mean for it to come out so abruptly. From the hurt look on his face she worries she’s treating this as a much bigger deal than it is. It means nothing, nothing. So she looks down intently at the file.

He’s quiet for a few moments and the air in the room is still and tense.

“Maybe we’ve been spending a little too much time together, Scully,” he says softly. He stands up and walks over to the door to grab his jacket. “I’ll go.”

“Mulder, I-“ she looks up at him. He’s wearing that puppy dog face she hates to see. “I’m sorry. It’s not a big deal. Please stay.”

“Are you sure?”

She can tell he doesn’t think it’s a big deal. One thing she’s learned about him is that he likes to be funny. He _is_ funny. All he’s doing is being funny.

“Yes, I’m sorry.”

“It happens, you know,” he says. “If it makes you feel better, while you went to park the car and I was checking in, the guy at the front desk thought you were my wife.”

She feels embarrassed on both of their behalfs, but he smiles gently, and she smiles back. “What did you say?”

“I told him you were out of my league.”

Her gut tightens in that uncomfortable way it does when she feels seen. Is he merely paying her a compliment, or does he really feel that way?

_I think it’s remotely plausible someone might think you’re hot._

“Never would have pegged you as the pet name type, though, Scully,” he continues, perhaps not wanting to hear her response. Maybe she’s taken too long already.

He sits down on her bed and leans back against the headboard, stuffing a pillow behind him. He does that all the time. She knows she’ll have her face buried in it later, inhaling his scent, feeling pathetic for missing him after spending every waking second with him today.

“I’m not the type, usually. They... slipped out,” she says honestly. “From time to time. Whenever I got… comfortable.”

He nods, his eyes soft. He blinks a couple times and if she could physically tear her gaze away from his she would but she cannot. She does not. Their eyes have a conversation like they always do, no words.

 _Comfortable_.

“I’m hungry,” she finally says after what feels like a dozen lifetimes. “Want to eat?”

“Sure. I’ll go pick something up.” It’s an olive branch and she nods, gratefully accepting it. “What are you in the mood for?”

“You pick, Mulder.”

He nods and picks up his jacket again, this time leaving without the awkwardness. And just before the door closes he leans back in, flashes the kind of smile that indeed makes him boyfriend material, and delivers a final blow.

“Back in a flash, honeybunch.”


	5. Bathing suits

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> From @gaycrouton: Mulder sees Scully in a bathing suit for the first time 💕

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had to do both scenarios, I couldn’t help myself.

She’d never used the word _svelte_ in her life. But it was the only word that leapt to mind when she entered the FBI fitness facility and watched him swim. His lean form cut through the water like a dolphin, up and down, glistening.

He told her to meet her at the pool, and she’d lingered in the front area near the locker rooms for a while before she realized he’d actually meant _at the pool._ She felt more exposed than the swimmers standing there in her work clothes, clutching her briefcase to her chest. She couldn’t decide if it were discomfort at waiting or sheer curiosity that drew her into the pool area, the splashing and echoing of voices and smell of chlorine reminding her of college.

Now she found herself gaping at her new partner as his tanned shoulders presented themselves to her as an offering.

He finished his laps and swam to the edge of the pool, gripping the edge and lifting himself up, catching her eye.

“Hey, Scully.”

The way he said it sent shivers down her spine, like pretty much every time.

“This couldn’t wait until work?” she asked.

He supported himself by his elbows and pushed his goggles to the top of his head. “I’m a fan of efficiency,” he shrugged. She could see him preparing to push himself up onto the ledge and willed herself not to look, not to even steal a glance but her supply of willpower was ill-equipped.

He was not.

She was certain her eyes bulged more than whatever he was packing underneath what must have been the smallest red speedo she’d ever seen in her life. She couldn’t tear her eyes away from it and she tried, she really did.

He didn’t seem to notice as he crossed in front of her to the bench and picked up his waiting towel, drying himself off. It didn’t matter; he looked just as good going as he had coming.

He saw her practically naked in his motel room a few weeks ago, she figured. Sure, it was to properly identify some mosquito bites but this felt only fair.

She thought instantly of the magazines Mulder kept in the bottom drawer of his desk. How she’d mercilessly teased him on several occasions, and now she found herself in the same situation: ogling. Admiring.

Desiring.

She couldn’t help herself. “How’s the water?”

He rubbed the towel on his face, leaving her free to stare. And she did.

“Colder than usual,” he answered, still apparently oblivious to her gawking. Her mind immediately raced to the most obvious conclusion, which was that if he looked this way now, she had a great desire to see him exiting water that was not cold.

“Do you swim, Scully?” he asked with a grin, as the towel left his face.

“No,” she responded instantly. “I mean, I do, just not...here.” He looked at her curiously. A few seconds went by. “I know how to swim,” she clarified.

 _God, he’s attractive,_ she thought, hating the thought. She’d never felt so caught off guard with him before. If there was a point system keeping track of who was more attracted to whom, she was certain she was losing spectacularly.

He wrapped the towel around his waist and it made her sad in spite of herself. The mere act of closing himself off to her gave her a mild depression.

“So what have you got?” she said, her mind back on work. Where it should be. Where it must stay.

  
  


***

  
  


Skinner had never invited Mulder to his place before. It was a fairly new building, and he hadn’t wanted to go. Social gatherings weren’t his favorite thing.

Friday afternoon he’d asked Scully if she was planning to go, and she’d said yes. When he saw “pool” in the description, his first thought, his only thought, was the possibility he’d get to see Scully in a bathing suit. He felt like kind of a creep for thinking this, but they’d been working together for five years now and such an opportunity hadn’t presented itself to them before.

So now he was standing next to a chaise lounge holding a cold Bud Light, which was crap beer, looking around for her, wondering if he’d turned up for nothing. _Fucking Skinner and his domestic beer._

Then out of the corner of his eye he saw a familiar shock of red hair in the water, coming close to the edge, up the ladder. Suddenly she was standing in front of him, hair wet and slick, wearing a black two piece bikini. He didn’t even have a moment to inwardly utter “jackpot” because his eye was drawn to a small silver ring in her navel.

_What. The. Fuck._

His jaw dropped, literally dropped, of its own accord. She noticed.

“Penny for your thoughts, Mulder?” she grinned, hands on hips. She knew what she was doing.

“That’s… surprising, Scully,” he said, gesturing to her belly button. “Seems a bit unlike you.”

“And you would know that how?” she said, impishly.

She had him there. “You’re right. I don’t.” _But I wish I did._

He smiled, loving the banter. Scully’d become more open to his flirtations since her cancer had gone into remission and he was enjoying the reciprocity. It struck him now how healthy she looked again. Her body was supple and curvy. Nothing like how pale and withdrawn she’d become during those harrowing final days.

Just as he felt like he might be leering, she seemed to get shy, dropping her hands to her sides and casually turning to the side. It gave him a great view of her profile, so if her attempt was to make herself less exposed, her efforts were for naught.

Just as he expected her to change the subject to dying or something, as was her wont, his eye caught sight of something he’d wanted to forget about: her tattoo.

Nestled on her lower back a bit off center, there it was, in the flesh. He’d seen the crime scene photos, the hospital records he was able to get ahold of before she’d made everything having to do with Ed Jerse disappear. But he’d never seen it up close and personal.

She caught him watching. Rather than address it she spun back around and walked to the lounge chair across from him, sitting down. That conversation would have to wait for another time, another place. Or not.

She started toweling herself off, then picked up a nearby tube of sunscreen. Her fair skin was no doubt in need of reapplication. He didn’t want to stare so he turned to look out at the pool, seeing some people he recognized, some people he didn’t. He could really only think about Scully in a two piece with a belly button ring. He started to zone out a bit when he heard her talking again.

“-Mulder?” she was saying. He turned. “Huh?”

“Can you get my back?”

She may as well have asked him _do you want to go UFO hunting?_

He didn’t even answer, he wordlessly took the bottle with a smile and squirted some of the cream into his hand before she could change her mind.

Suddenly his hands were on her bare skin, and he rubbed the sunscreen into her shoulders carefully, making sure to cover every inch. He didn’t want her to get burned, sure, but he also wanted to be touching her as long as humanly possible.

“Get underneath the straps, too,” she said.

“Did anyone ever tell you you’re bossy, Scully?” he responded with a chuckle.

“Sorry, I just… I always get burned there. No one does it right.”

He would do it right, and they both knew it. He dipped his hand beneath her halter strap, cupping her entire neck with his palm. He thought of the Arctic Circle. He thought of trust.

As he rubbed the cream over her shoulders and down her back she leaned forward, exposing the ouroboros. He covered it too, and couldn’t help himself from tracing the circle with his finger. He wasn’t sure if she could tell but when she shivered he knew.

“There you go,” he said. And before he lost his nerve he added, “Can you do me?”

She raised an eyebrow at the double entendre and twirled a finger, gesturing for him to turn. He did, and felt her get behind him on the chair, rising up onto her knees. He didn’t realize he was doing it but he closed his eyes when she began. He just let her rub his back and pictured her hands on him, enjoying this touch he’d never felt from her before in any capacity.

Hours might have passed, for all he knew, when her hands came to rest on the tops of his shoulders and he felt her lean in behind him, close to his ear.

“No speedo today, huh?”

His lips curved into a smile. A memory stirred, when he’d made her meet him at the pool years ago. He’d always wondered what she made of that.

He mindlessly picked at his green swim trunks. “Neither the time nor place.” The words had deeper meaning, and they both knew it.

“Ah, I see.”

She squeezed his shoulders gently and got up off the chair. She faced him again and this time the navel ring was directly in his eye line. 

“Wanna go for a swim, Mulder?” she asked.

He nodded, grinning. “Yes, I do.”

As they walked to the pool his hand went automatically to the spot on her back with the tattoo. The spot they never talked about.

Another time, another place.

  
  
  
  



	6. Scully and Reyes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt from @asolitaryrose on tumblr:
> 
> hi! i have a prompt for you: can you please write some scully x reyes bonding moments? scully really needs a female friend in her life and i would love for a cute prompt with the two of them sharing a moment, whether it's taking care of william, gossiping around a cup of coffee, or going dancing together to get scully out of her apartment. thank you so much!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love the friendship between Scully and Reyes and wish we’d gotten to see more of it. Here’s a little scene I imagine could have happened late S9. Enjoy!

“Tell me.”

Monica Reyes plunked the glass of amber liquid in front of Dana, removing her brown leather jacket and hanging it on the back of her chair.

Dana looked down at the drink and raised an eyebrow. “Tell you what?”

“Everything, Dana.” Monica sat on the chair and propped her feet on the footrest, spinning the chair to face her.

Dana furrowed her brow. Monica expected this; she was a tough nut to crack and hadn’t opened up much at all in the year or so they’d known each other.

Dana swirled the whiskey around in her glass and took a tentative sip. She coughed a bit and her eyes widened.

“I figured it was a whiskey kind of night,” Monica said.

“It is.” Dana took a more confident sip, and Monica followed suit. The alcohol burned all the way down. It felt great. “So what is it you want to know?”

“You and Agent Mulder. What’s the scoop?”

Dana shifted a bit, perhaps shocked at her forwardness, perhaps relieved. “The scoop?”

Monica raised an eyebrow. “Come on. When did it happen for you two? How long did it take to make that move from just partners?”

“How do you know we did?” Dana replied playfully.

“Oh, come _on_ ,” Monica said, giving her a huge eye roll. Sure, she and Mulder had never demonstrated a thing before her eyes but William had to have come from somewhere. And from the way those two looked at each other… well, it was enough to make anyone certain.

Dana laughed. “I’m sorry, it’s just… been a while since I’ve done the girl talk thing.”

“Let’s remedy that, shall we?” Monica grinned.

“Fine. But you have to promise not to judge too much.”

“Scouts’ honor,” Monica said, even though she’d never actually been a scout.

Dana leaned into her drink and her eyes darted to the other woman. “ _Seven years.”_ She whispered it quietly to her drink, as if the glass of whiskey were the only thing in the room that wouldn’t judge her for such a harrowing admission.

“Seven years?!” Monica’s jaw dropped. She felt bad for breaking her promise so quickly, but… _shit_.

Dana rolled her eyes and took another sip. “Not an uncommon reaction.”

“Wow.”

“You said you wouldn’t judge.”

“No, I mean… I’m just impressed. I wish I had that kind of restraint. I’ve been in far too many office romances,” Monica admitted.

“I suppose our particular office is... a bit unusual,” Dana explained.

Monica shook her head. “But... I mean… _how_?” was all she could get out. My god, these were two extremely attractive people. What could possibly have prevented them from breaking the rules? Just a little bit? “How is that possible? Not even a slip? A drunken night, a rough case? Never?”

“Well, when you put it like that, now I’m judging me too,” she chuckled.

“Did you ever want to?”

Dana’s eyes softened, perhaps remembering a thousand such moments. “For the longest time I avoided thinking about it entirely,” she said. “Our partnership began under such intense circumstances. Before we knew it we relied on each other so utterly… it terrified me to imagine risking that for something that could’ve been fleeting, meaningless.”

“But it wouldn’t have been, surely,” Monica reasoned.

“I guess you’re right,” Dana said. “I can agree with you in hindsight.”

“How did it end up happening, finally?”

“I honestly don’t know,” Dana said. “I think about that a lot, how it happened without much consideration or preamble. I just… knew. I couldn’t wait anymore.” She looked up at Monica with a small smile. “I’ve never actually talked to anyone about this before.”

“Give me all the dirty details, Dana,” Monica said, propping her chin up on her elbow. “I think you need this.” Dana raised an eyebrow. “Okay, I need it,” Monica laughed. She wouldn’t admit the unspoken; she’d been experiencing a bit of a dry spell.

Dana sighed. “It was at his place. I remember it was raining.” Her eyes looked far away, deep in reflection. “I fell asleep on his couch, and when I woke up, I saw that he had covered me with a blanket. I just remember feeling so safe, and cared for.” She looked up at her friend. “I felt loved.”

“Then what happened?” Monica asked, eyes wide. This felt like getting the secrets to the pyramids.

“Then… I just decided. I wanted it to happen. It was going to happen.” She took a sip, then swirled the whiskey around. She’d almost reached the bottom. “And it did.”

“Was it good?” Monica asked, rapt, like a kid at story time. “I bet it was good.”

Dana looked at her with a smile. “ _So_ good.”

Monica smiled. “Can you see the hearts in my eyes? My god, Dana.”

Dana grinned and downed the rest of her drink. “You want more?”

“Uh, yeah,” Monica said, taking another drink herself. _Duh_.

“I will tell you, he’s very, very good… you know.” She leaned in and whispered. “ _With his mouth.”_

“That does not surprise me one bit,” Monica said. “The man has quite the obsessive nature.”

Dana laughed. “He certainly does,” she said, shaking her head. “I used to wonder so often, how it would go between us, what it would be like. And it exceeded every single one of my extremely high expectations.”

“You’re really lucky it did, after so many years of wondering,” Monica pointed out.

“It didn’t surprise me, actually. We work so well together in every other way. It was just… you know. Perfect.”

Monica sighed, heart eyes back in action. Dana got the attention of the bartender and gestured for another round. They were both quiet for a moment.

“I miss him so much, Monica,” she said. Her voice hitched a bit. Monica’s heart suddenly dropped into her stomach, the smile disappearing from her face. She hadn’t meant to upset her.

She scooted her chair closer and put her arm around her friend, and Dana let her. She leaned her head on her shoulder and took a few deep breaths.

Dana hadn’t talked about William at all since she’d given him up weeks ago, but Monica knew she was thinking about him now as well. How could she not? The love of her life was gone, her son had followed not long afterwards. She didn’t have anyone anymore.

But she had her. And Monica wanted to be there for her, to be the friend she so desperately needed.

“You’ll be together again soon, I know it. I’ve never seen two people so clearly made for each other,” Monica said.

Dana blushed a bit, sitting up. “Well, I’m glad you see it. Looking back now I wish we’d seen it sooner.”

Monica nodded. “I truly believe everything happens for a reason,” she said. “You weren’t ready for each other yet. That’s all there is to it.”

Dana looked at her, and there was something new in her eyes, like a recognition. A comfort. “You really do remind me so much of my sister,” she said softly. “I think that a lot. It’s like every time is a gift, a tiny piece of her I’m getting back.”

Monica had read every X File in the basement since Dana first compared her to her sister. She knew what had happened to Melissa Scully, and it was obviously a very painful memory.

A silence hung between them, only the voices of patrons and clinking of shot glasses permeating the air. Monica reached out a hand and touched Dana’s, resting next to her drink.

“I’m so sorry,” she said. “About everything.”

Dana wiped a small tear. “Don’t be,” she said, a smile peeking through. “I should be sorry. I don’t want to talk about sad things tonight, okay?”

“Okay.”

The bartender set the new drinks down in front of them. Monica held up her glass and clinked it against Dana’s, who then proceeded to take a huge swig.

“Now,” Dana said, settling the glass in front of her. “You tell me. What the hell is going on between you and Agent Doggett?”

Monica nearly spit out her drink. “Wow, you really go for the jugular, don’t you?”

“Turnabout is fair play,” she grinned. “Now, spill.”

An eyebrow lifted, in tandem with her drink. She threw it back. “Well… um, I don’t know. John is… well, John.”

“That he is,” Dana smiled. “And you’ve known him how long?”

Monica grimaced. “Um. Seven years…?” She made a face that could only be described as properly chastised. Dana’s teeth showed for the first time that evening in a wide, toothy grin.

“Ha! Seven years!”

“It’s not the same!” Monica protested with a smile. “We fell out of touch. And the circumstances when we met were… well, terrible.”

Dana nodded, easing back. John’s son had been murdered. It was certainly no time for the two of them, either.

“Like you said. Maybe you’re just not ready for each other yet,” she said gently.

“Maybe,” Monica grinned.

Dana leaned back into her chair, and she seemed comfortable. It was exactly what Monica had been aiming for. “Thanks for doing this, Monica. I needed it.”

“You’re welcome,” she replied. Dana smiled, and she smiled back. She sipped her whiskey and it warmed her insides. Like friendship.

  
  



	7. Fart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> From anon: “one word prompt: fart”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Omg anon 😂 challenge accepted 💨

She’s just drifting off when she hears it. Feels it.

Her eyes fly open and she turns, horrified, to her partner sitting across the trashed, disgusting walk-up they’ve been posted in for three days now. _Maybe he didn’t hear._

He heard.

“Why, Dana Scully!” he says with delight.

She draws her knees up to her chest in the chair she’d nearly fallen asleep in. They’d been on stakeout detail and she must have dozed off.

“What?” she asks.

“Did I just hear what I think I just heard?”

Fucking Mediterranean food. _Deny, deny, deny._

“What do you mean?” she says innocently.

He grins. “Oh, you’re going to play it that way?”

She shrugs. “I don’t have any clue what you’re talking about.”

Mulder assumes his best Rod Serling pose. “Submitted for your approval: one Dana Scully, a distinguished federal agent. And, though she’d love to claim otherwise, has an errant wish to appear perfect to her less-than-perfect partner.”

“Mulder.”

“But on one fine summer evening arrives a sound known as... a fart. A toot, one might say. A left cheek sneak.”

“Mulder, shut up.”

“Agent Dana Scully, homo sapiens, who is soon to discover that sometimes the passing of gas does indeed happen, and there can be no stopping it.”

She stares at him. “Are you done?”

He pauses, then finishes quickly. “...Said lesson to be learned in The Twilight Zone.”

“I am mortified.”

“Don’t be. It’s a perfectly natural biological process, which I’m sure you could explain to me in great detail.”

“I could, but I will not.”

“Scully, relax,” he chuckles. “Half the time you’re wound so tight I’m worried you’ll snap in two.”

This makes her uncomfortable. “Is that what you think of me?”

“No, not really. But I do think you’re too hard on yourself.”

“Because I don’t want you to hear me fart?!” she says, incredulous.

“So you admit you farted.”

“Never, you’ll have to prove it,” she says playfully. “I can’t see it, I can’t hear it. It never happened.” It’s not as if she hasn’t used this approach with him before.

“Ah,” he says, getting up from his perch on the chair across from her. “What if we apply the scientific method, Doctor Scully?” He tiptoes towards her and begins softly sniffing the air around her.

“Don’t do that, you’re disgusting,” she laughs.

He shrugs. “I’m just gathering evidence. Like my sexy, intelligent partner would.”

“Mulder, there are some things that should remain a mystery between us. This is definitely one of them.”

“I don’t want any more mysteries between us,” he says, making his way over to her, kneeling in front of her. He pulls her legs down, situating them on either side of him.

She stares at him, so goddamn relaxed, so attractive in his gray T shirt. They only started sleeping together very recently. Fart or no fart, she wants to jump his bones right now. They’re supposed to be working, damnit.

He runs his hands up her thighs, his thumbs tracing circles as they travel. They rest at her iliac crest; he can almost completely encircle her waist with his large hands. He stands, leans in. “You’re cute when you’re embarrassed,” he says.

“So what you’re saying is I’ve never been cuter.”

“Never,” he assures her, as he presses his lips to hers. She knows he wouldn’t have called attention to it if it weren’t the truth.

“Let’s never speak of this again, then, please,” she says quietly when he pulls away.

He grins. “What, you think this has never happened before?”

She’s stunned. “I… wait, what?”

He leans back onto his haunches, hands grasping the tops of her thighs. “First time was another stakeout, long time ago. You were asleep in the car. I remember I had binoculars glued to my face watching out the window and then I heard it, ever so quietly, from the passenger seat.”

Her eyes darken, warningly. “Mulder….”

“I thought I was dreaming. It was like a tiny, adorable trumpet.”

Her jaw drops in abject horror.

“And then,” he says gleefully, “again at The Falls a couple times, but we were married then, so that sort of doesn’t count, does it?”

She holds her face in her hands. “Oh, my god.”

“And just the other night, Scully. You fell asleep after… well, you know. I was watching you. You looked so peaceful, everything was so romantic, and then-“

“Okay, stop. This is my worst nightmare.”

He shrugs. “Doesn’t change the fact that you’re the most gorgeous, amazing woman I’ve ever had the pleasure to hear _all_ of her sounds.”

“I am horrified by this,” she admits. “And you’re not helping.”

“Would it help if I kissed you again?”

“That’s it. I can’t ever look you in the face again. I’m quitting the FBI and you can find me at home, under the bed.”

“I’d much rather find you on top of it.”

She gets up to look for her jacket. “I’m leaving.”

“Where are you going?”

“To get some air.”

It was the wrong thing to say.

“Leave the door open, will you?” he calls after her.

  
  
  
  



	8. “I don’t want you to stop.”

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt #65 from the Drabble list: “I don’t want you to stop.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Takes place post Agua Mala.

“I’m sorry I keep dragging you out on these cases, Scully,” he says.

The rain pitter patters against the windshield, the wipers beating back and forth frantically like a dog’s tail. She can feel the storm approaching, like a torrent of unspoken feelings mirroring those inside their beat-up rental car. Half of her hopes they’ll get out of Florida in one piece before the second hurricane hits and the other half wouldn’t mind getting cooped up with Mulder in what would surely be a hard-won single motel room.

They’ve been here before, on some ridiculous adventure that either pans out or doesn’t. He always asks her to go with him. She always goes.

But this time it’s different. This time it’s personal.

_Without the FBI personal interest is all I have. And if you take that away from me, there is no reason for me to continue._

The words echo inside her head, loaded. Angry. Things have simmered down in their usual way, but there are things left unsaid, feelings left unexpressed.

In their usual way.

She would go with him anyway, though; she always does.

She doesn’t want to admit that she’s terrified if she doesn’t go he’ll move down the list to the next best thing. She’s terrified he’ll ask someone else.

She’s terrified he’ll ask _her_.

“I don’t want you to stop,” she says softly, her breath hitching in her throat.

She reaches out and takes his hand, wet from the rain, but warm around hers nonetheless. It’s her truth, and will be forever, because the truth is if he stops taking her with him she might stop breathing altogether.


	9. an unfinished note

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A prompt from @monikafilefan : In the scene in Brand X, Mulder is sitting in the back with brain scans and a file in front of him 2wks post surgery. He is also clearly typing something on the computer. What if he’s typing something very important? What if it was for Scully to find at later date, and what would he have written?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for the Season 7 brain disease receipts, Mon! 
> 
> (Also: if this feels a bit familiar, Scully actually does find this note in [Culmination.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14748734/chapters/34324779))

 

It feels good to be back at work again. His fingers fly across the keys as he transcribes Scully’s field notes. Mindless, monotonous. He wishes he didn’t have to think about anything else.

But he does have something to think about, something he’s been thinking about for some time: the fact that, ever so surely, since he’d been operated on by the cancer man his brain has been slowly dying. As if tiny lights are going out inside his head one by one, and he is powerless to keep them alight.

His breath escapes in ragged wheezes, still affected by the beetle larvae, and he stares at the insides of his own brain. He requested the scans his last day in North Carolina, after Scully had gone home. 

This is the moment his death sentence becomes real, in laser sharp detail glaring out at him from the surface of a light box. These scans cannot hide what is happening to him. 

It feels illicit doing this in the office, in Scully’s space, no less, but he’s nothing if not a masochist. They only started sleeping together a couple weeks ago and he’s been in a hospital bed most of that time, rather than in hers. Every day that passes feels like such a waste. 

He wants to tell her but he doesn’t. She’d only worry, she’d only spend every second of every day trying to cure that which cannot be cured. He knows this as surely as he knows he’d feel the same, because he has felt it. He did feel the same when she told him of her own illness. The similarities are striking.

_I refuse to believe that._

_I don’t accept that._

His own words echo in his ears as he remembers vividly his own denial, his own determination to save her. 

His own failure when he knew he couldn’t.

He doesn’t wish that upon her. He can’t bring himself to bequeath her this burden. There are no doctors of this earth that can help him, not even Scully.

After he’s gone he wants her to know the things he cannot say to her. But even now, he isn’t certain what those things are.

He’s stopped typing without realizing it, deep in thought. He rips a piece of paper off a nearby scratch pad and stares at the blank page. Limitless potential, the type he and Scully no longer have. It’s a cruel irony.

 _Dear Dana,_ he writes. 

 

No, that doesn’t sound right. It isn’t enough. He crosses it out. 

_Dearest Dana,_

 

Is it wrong, too, somehow? She’s the dearest person in the world to him and if he’s too chicken shit to tell her with his mouth she should know it somehow, someday.

But it still isn’t right. Not like this. It doesn’t feel like him. He strikes through the sentiment and it hurts as he does. He begins the letter the only way he’s used to.

_Scully,_

 

 ...and then his mind goes completely blank. As if the deadly alien disease inside it is robbing him of reason and will, as well as his memories. What does he want her to know? That he’s dying? She won’t need a note to know that when one day, very soon, they spend the night making love and he doesn’t wake up the next morning. Just the thought makes him ill.

He opts for honesty.

_Scully,_

_I don’t know where to start. I_

 

He pauses, because how does one begin a letter like this?

 _I love you,_ is what he wants to say. _If you find this after I’m gone, just know that I loved you._

Why are the words so hard to write? It’s as if putting pen to paper, committing those three words to history makes this all real. And it will make it even harder for her to move on from him when the inevitable occurs. 

So much has been taken away from her since she met him all those years ago. Now he will be removing himself from her life as well. 

He pictures her smile, her eyes. He imagines the various curves of her body he’s seen so few times as he presses his fingers into her flesh, hearing her cry out his name, knowing every time might be the last time. 

He isn’t ready to do this, not yet.

He folds up the note and puts it in his pocket. He’ll finish it as soon as he figures out what the hell he’s going to say to her.

Recalibrating, he turns back to the work, back to the job at hand. In a few minutes she’ll show up and will never notice the scans, never think twice that they might be his, that there might be something wrong. He will feel guilty when he wraps himself around her in his bed tonight and thinks of what to tell her, what to say, how to say it, when to say it.

 _There has to be an end_ , _Scully,_ he thinks. 

It’s the right thing to say. But she moves against him and sighs contentedly. She’s happy, and when she’s happy, he is, too. 

Soon he’ll have to break her heart, shatter it into a million pieces. 

But not tonight.

  



	10. “You’re not as quiet as you think you are.”

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous prompt from a drabble list: #62  “You’re not as quiet as you think you are.”

 

  
“I can hear you, you know.”

His voice comes without warning, her own silence the only sound, deafening in her ears. She’s been laying in the dark for several minutes, chirping crickets outside, the big tree next to the house scraping its branches along the weathered exterior. Mulder’s soft breathing next to her.

“I didn’t say anything,” she points out.

“I know. But I can still hear you. I can feel you thinking.” He brings his face close, his warm breath at her neck. “You’re not as quiet as you think you are.”

He drags his lips across her tiny scar, breathing in deeply. 

She knows she isn’t fooling him, not entirely. The sound of her own reticence is as familiar to her ears as it is to his. But she doesn’t know what to say so she says nothing.

She really hopes he can’t hear what she’s thinking about. How he’d welcomed death so easily in that jail cell, as if she weren’t enough for him to simply live. How she feels as empty as their new house. 

How she can’t stop thinking about the extra room at the end of the hall; the room neither of them have mentioned yet.

How afraid she is that he doesn’t forgive her. 

She shivers, even though spring has certainly sprung and no more than a gentle breeze flutters the drapes against the open window. He pulls her closer.

“Everything okay?” he asks softly.

His arms wrap tightly around her. She pulls his hand to her lips, presses them against it.

“Everything is perfect,” she replies.

She lays nestled in his arms, in the still of the night, and tries to think more quietly.

 


	11. MSR married kiss

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kissing prompt from @baroness_blixen: "Throwing their arms around the other person’s neck, hugging them close before kissing them passionately on the lips."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've written bits and pieces of Mulder & Scully's "wedding day" but this was a perfect opportunity to focus on a kiss. Enjoy!

2008

 

_“For better or for worse, as long as we both shall live.”_

They say the words in a courthouse, little fanfare. Just another day, another step forward in their journey. 

Marriage has never really been off the table, but it’s a decadence; like caviar or a bottle of Dom. They’ll indulge, but uncomfortably, eyeing each other as they eye the door, waiting for some other normal couple to come in and take their place, shooing them away. 

It isn’t them, not really, but something about it tastes so good. 

No other couple interferes, however, as this moment belongs to them. _Finally_. The merging of two souls, before God for her, before the District of Columbia for him. 

It’s exactly the way they want it.

“ _I now pronounce you husband and wife_ ” echoes inside the nearly empty room as she—breaking the standard protocol—cannot keep herself from him a moment longer and flings her arms around his neck, hugging him tightly. 

 _Mine_ , she tells him with her eyes as she leans back to look at him, smiling. 

And the words “ _kiss the bride_ ” barely escape the officiant’s lips before Mulder’s are on Scully’s, finally and insurmountably. 

The kiss is slow, passionate, his lips drinking from hers like that glass of champagne to which they are so unaccustomed. But they fall into it, taking their time, because in this moment there are no monsters, there are no aliens.

There is no darkness.

There is only the two of them and this kiss, _the truth they both know_. The truth they will always share.

It’s a million untaken chances, unfinished moments, the slowest of burns. It’s years of holding back truth while insisting to one another the truth is all they ever sought. 

It’s knowing that, although they have so much yet to face, in this moment they can finally begin anew together. 

There’s no way to know how much time has passed but the proverbial pin drops in the quiet room as Margaret Scully lets out a tiny gasp of delight, bringing her hands immediately to her mouth to stifle it, reticent to mar a moment such as this. She’s never seen these two so exposed; proclaimed to the world as one another’s, as if they haven’t already been for sixteen years.

They sink into the kiss as Mulder brings a hand up to Scully’s cheek, tenderly stroking the edge of her jaw with his thumb. The sleeve of his jacket tickles her neck and she laughs, her arms still around him, unwilling to let go, _never, ever going to let go._

 _This is it_ , he tells her with his kiss. _You and me_ , she tells him back. 

They walked into this courthouse as partners. They will walk out of it as partners.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For more wedding day stuff, go [here.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14748734/chapters/34426004)


	12. Reconnect

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kiss prompt: Tentative kisses given in the dark.
> 
> This is supposed to be a kiss prompt, I know, but it turned into fucking so what can I say? I guess I’m a big old cheater. Hopefully y’all won’t complain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains explicit material.

 

 

“Baby’s asleep, finally,” Mulder says, collapsing onto the bed facedown with a heavy sigh. Scully’s propped up against the headboard, furiously surfing her phone for baby sleep technique sites.

She sets the phone down and reaches out to rub his back, back and forth, across heather gray cotton. A tiny splotch of spit-up is nestled near his collar and scratchy stubble stealthily creeps down his neck towards scraggly ends that scream  _desperately needs a haircut_.

To her, he’s never looked sexier.

“For now,” she groans. She hears a contented  _mmm_  into the comforter and the edge of his mouth quirks up.

“We should, too,” he mumbles, the sound muffled.

He’s right, so she shifts in the bed, gathering the sheets to let him slip underneath next to her, his arm automatically curling around her waist, his head nestled next to her chest, his soft breaths warm against her abdomen.

“Six weeks,” he moans. “I haven’t gone without a good night’s sleep in this long since…”

“…Ever?” she finishes for him, turning out the light. She snuggles down next to him as the room is plunged into darkness, holding his head close against her chest.

“Ha,” he replies half-heartedly. She knows as much as anyone he’s always been a troubled sleeper, although going strong at six weeks, their baby is giving him a run for his money. “You know what I mean. Stakeouts, even deep profiling. It was never like this.” 

“It’s got to be soon,” she says, shaking her head. “It was around six weeks with William.”

They’d been trudging through the so-called fourth trimester with as much aplomb as possible for autumn-aged parents. After the first few days her references to their son had stopped stinging and began actually helping. In any event, the baby still hadn’t slept through the night, and at the end of every day, they’d both silently wonder  _will this be the night?_

“Let’s hope so,” he says. He’s so tired it comes out “ _lezzhopesuhhhh_ …” and she’s certain he’ll be snoring softly within minutes.

Absently, he traces circles on her rib cage, barely grazing the bottom part of her T-shirt which is riding high on her belly at the moment. She knows he isn’t intending it, but suddenly a desire awakens within her she hasn’t felt since before the birth.

His scent is overpowering, the heady fragrance of maleness washing over her and she thinks it entirely possible she’s never been so turned on by Fox Mulder in her life. 

Her nipples harden and a wave of arousal paints her inner thighs. Six weeks. Exactly what her doctor had told her.  _Goddamn,_  she thinks,  _it’s like clockwork._

“Mulder.”

Her voice isn’t as laced with urgency as she feels, and he seems to agree as he merely  _mmmms_  into her breast, although the vibrations only heighten her desire. 

She slides down in bed until they are face to face in the dark, and her hands grope in the blackness to find him, blindly planting soft kisses along his jawline, down to his neck. Her hands roam across his T shirt and she slips one underneath, desperate to feel his hot skin. 

He’s definitely awake now. “…Scully?”

She doesn’t answer but throws a leg over him, suddenly grinding her pelvis against his like a horny teenager, only slowly.

He slides her sleeve up her arm, baring it to the moonlight, tracing the curve with his fingers. He leans forward to kiss her shoulder, once, twice; tentative, as if asking permission.

“Yes,” she breathes in reply to his unspoken question. His hand travels down her body, carefully cupping the swell of a full breast, and she gasps in brief discomfort but only for a moment.

“Is this okay?” he asks. In answer she takes his hand and presses it more firmly against her, the pressure becoming part of her pleasure. It’s nice, so nice to grant him access again after weeks of her body being off limits.

“Just go slow,” she instructs.

His large hand palms her breast through the shirt, his fingers curving delicately, softly teasing a sore nipple. She moans softly, loving this, the feel of his hands on her again. She’s been so busy with the baby she’s barely had time to miss this, to miss sex. But  _God_ , she’s missed sex. She’s practically desperate for him. 

She knows they should go slow, her healing body demands it. But her desire is threatening to override her senses.

He seems to notice this incongruity and again pulls away at her sounds, mistaking her pleasure for pain. 

“It’s okay,” she whispers in the dark, the square of his jaw finally somewhat visible to her steadily adjusting eyes. He leans forward and plants a kiss to the center of her forehead.

“Tell me to stop,” he says, the “ _if it hurts_ ” left unsaid.

“Don’t.”

His hand dips down, down, beneath the fabric of what she now remembers is his own T-shirt, until it finds the waistband of her panties, and she arches her body towards him, widening her legs as he slips inside so, so easily.

“Ready, are you?” she hears him grinning.

“Shut up, Mulder,” she gasps as he explores her with a single finger, sounds of an almost embarrassing slickness puckering around the tip.  _Oh God_ … she thinks, as he circles her most sensitive spot, so close to her apex already. It should hurt; she expected it to hurt but it doesn’t. 

Her hand shoots out to feel his throbbing erection through his shorts and he groans, “ _Fuck…_ ” 

He needs this just as much as she does and she wants him to have it. She can’t go slow anymore.

She pushes down the waist of his shorts and grabs him fully, amazed at how hard he can still get so quickly; the seemingly endless virility of this man one of her very favorite blessings in an infrequently charmed life.

He removes his finger from her aching clit and plants both hands on either side of her head as he hovers above her. She reaches up to bring him down on top of her, taking a pull on his succulent bottom lip, enjoying the feel of his weight upon her. She coats her fingers with her own arousal, then strokes him as well, guiding him to where she knows he wants to go, to what she knows they both need badly.

“I’ve missed this,” she says, “even though it may not have seemed that way.”

“God, I know, Scully,” he replies, his tongue in her mouth. “I’ve missed you, too.” He pulls away briefly. “Maybe more than sleep, even.”

“Definitely more,” she agrees. “Now stop talking, Mulder.”

He grins, his familiar lopsided grin she can now see much more clearly in the moonlight, and gently drags the tip of his cock along her slit, testing her reaction. It doesn’t hurt.

“Oh,” she says, for no reason whatsoever other than her absolute surprise at this turn of events.

“Does that hurt?” he asks.

“No, please just do it,” she says, and he begins to slide into her slowly, almost excruciatingly slowly, not because he doesn’t trust her but because he doesn’t trust himself. She loves him for that.

Soon enough he is fully sheathed inside her and it’s as if she didn’t just give birth six weeks ago, as if nothing at all has changed, except there is a sleeping infant down the hall now that might wake up at any moment.

She grabs the flesh of his ass and pulls him into her, the urgency returning. He doesn’t seem to take the hint, however, as he leans down to kiss her again, sweeping her long hair out of her face, his kisses soft and tender. He pulls away to look into her eyes, and she can finally see his own reflecting the moonlight, and in this moment she pauses.

There is no urgency. The baby is sleeping, the man she loves is inside her and he wants to reconnect. 

She thinks of last time: how desperately they’d both needed this and neither could have it. 

Maybe slow is best.

She takes his face in her hands and pulls him down to pay him back in kind; kisses small but exquisite, as he moves within her, languid strokes. Heaven. 

There is no pain, only his love.

They finish uninterrupted, spasms rocking her quivering body and his own release following soon after. They lay tangled and sweaty in each other’s arms, even more exhausted than before.

She pants heavily for a moment, then declares, “We should probably go to sleep now,” rather unnecessarily.

He chuckles tiredly, kissing the top of her head, holding her close. “I don’t think that’s going to be a problem.” 

They drift off together, bathed in luminescence, and aren’t awakened by the baby until the sun is up.


	13. Brave

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: hi! could you write something about scully nursing william and getting frustrated because she's tired, he's fussing and it's not going the way she wants to, and mulder trying to help in his own thoughtful and adorable way?

****  
  
  


The wailing has been going on for hours. 

Maybe not hours, but to new parents minutes feel like hours; hours feel like days. 

Scully holds William close, tears forming in her eyes. She’s exhausted. She’s tried shushing, she’s tried swaddling, she’s tried soothing. The only “S” in this particular baby’s vernacular is apparently “screaming.”

She tries to nurse for the dozenth time, to no avail. He’s simply not having it right now.

“Shhh, there, there,” she whispers, closing her eyes to contain the tears, bouncing him on her shoulder. 

_ Shh,  _ bounce _. Shh,  _ bounce _. Shhhh… _

“Give him to me,” Mulder’s voice comes, and he’s suddenly there, arms outstretched.

“It’s fine, Mulder, it’s okay.”

“Did you try the bullfrog song?”

“Yes, I tried the bullfrog song,” she snaps. He recoils at her abrupt tone. “I’m sorry, Mulder,” she says immediately, tears actively streaming. “This is just so hard… everyone tells you how hard this is but nothing can possibly prepare you for it.”

Mulder crouches down in front of her. “I know. Believe me, I had no idea, either.” He strokes the tiny infant’s head and smiles at her. “I think you’re doing an incredible job.”

She reaches out to touch his face. She can feel the scratchy stubble, smell his new-Dad scent. “You’ve been amazing,” she says, her voice hitching with emotion.

He smiles again and leans in to talk to William. “You know how brave your mom is?” he says, eyes flickering up to Scully. He winks. “She’s saved my ass so many times.”

“Mulder!” she scolds.

“Sorry, my…  _ booty _ … so many times. From military bases, from monsters. From serial killers...” She gives him a stern look,  _ you’ll give the kid nightmares _ , but realizes the impossibility of that happening and lets his voice do the magic it’s so often done on her. William’s fussing has subsided considerably.

“...And you know what, little guy? She did all of that on her own.”

Scully’s tears still stream, but they are happy tears now. Mulder has that power. 

He looks right at her. “She did it by herself. All by herself. Because she’s the bravest person I’ve ever met.”

Scully nods in understanding. Mulder stands slowly and leans in to kiss her, and she can almost feel the softness of his lips against hers when her eyes fly open and she is alone.

Mulder isn’t here. He hasn’t been here in weeks.

_ It’s okay, _ she thinks.  _ I can do this. I’m the bravest person he’s ever met. _


	14. MSR public kiss

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> From alienbaby-babymama on tumblr. Kissing prompt #40: A gentle kiss that quickly descends into passion, with little regard for what’s going on around them. (possibly have been working separate cases and are reunited.)

She waits in their spot, nervously tapping her foot. Checking her wristwatch. 

It’s only been a couple weeks since they’ve begun this brave new journey; they’ve graduated from telling each other  _ I love you  _ with their eyes to telling each other with their bodies. She still thinks of that night often, the ontological shock of it; how a single decision can alter everything about your world in the blink of an eye, the rhythmic thrum of a heartbeat.

He’s been in the field today; she, stuck in the office finishing paperwork. She glances around the mall, watching tourists bustle by, the late spring air sticky with the standard DC humidity. 

Finally he arrives, no jacket, sleeves rolled up, hands in his pockets; grinning almost shyly, like a teenager picking up his dream girl for prom. She tries to think of something to say, something some normal person would say to another normal person in a scenario like this, but her lips can only smile back as he approaches.

He glances around a bit awkwardly until his gaze lands upon her lips and she knows what he wants to do. She wants to do it too, but she’s frozen in place. Her body is reacting to his presence in an almost compulsory manner, but this place is so…  _ public. _

She’s missed him today, tremendously. Now that she knows what it feels like to have him wrapped around her it seems as though absences are even harder than before. 

But sometimes she wonders.

All those nights spent apart over the years, choosing loneliness. The nights she’d known she was longing for him; the nights she hadn’t known.  All the nights she wondered whether or not he was longing for her. 

Mostly, that ever-present dull ache of uncertainty that was unyielding and unrelenting. 

Those were the impossible nights.

She suddenly has the completely irrational thought that she’s missed him more terribly since this morning than she ever has in their entire time together. More than New Mexico, more than Tunguska. More than all the times she actually feared for his life. 

She’d known that when this happened, when they’d finally given into their physical urges, there would be a new world thrust into her old one. A seismic event. A rupture along her fault line, shifting her entire existence from the Dana Scully who works with her partner into the Dana Scully who sleeps with her partner.

But she hadn’t anticipated this third world; the world in which everyone else exists. The world in which she doesn’t know how to behave. Not yet.

Mulder doesn’t seem to know how to behave either, that much is clear; but one of the main differences between them is that he rarely cares about such things. 

He takes a step forward and his lips cover hers like a habit, something practiced or rehearsed. Not something they’ve never done before, at least in public.

Her eyes drift shut as his thumb moves to her chin, tracing the outline of her jaw smoothly, and the kiss feels safe and gentle at first; until his fingers move into her hair, weaving turns to grasping, and then it’s all over. 

She retreats into that second world, the one where it’s only the two of them and nothing else matters. Her mouth opens to his and he claims her, here, out in the open, in front of everyone. This may only last for a few seconds but she feels it in her gut, this belonging; they’re now part of each other and this tiny microcosm of Earth will know about it, whether they realize it or not.

His hand drifts slowly down her back as he draws her in close, and she feels their hearts beating in tandem, the excitement and passion of this moment unmatched by any government conspiracy or shape-shifting monster they’ve chased. 

Here and now, they show the world they’ve caught each other.

He finally pulls away from her lips, all sense of time lost, and when she opens her eyes he cocks his head to the side, looking for all the world like little Queequeg, eyes identical in curious intent if not in hue.

“Was that... okay?” he asks, still holding her close.

She nods, thinking of all the understatements in the world, how ironic that the biggest one she’d ever encountered-  _ “okay” _ \- emerged from the lips of one Fox Mulder.

“I’m sorry I’m late,” he says. She shrugs and smiles, dazed from his kiss, knowing it doesn’t matter. She’d wait for him forever. She  _ has _ waited for him forever.

“What do you say, Scully? Dinner?” he asks. She smiles and nods again, all speech apparently having left her body. She takes his arm and leans into him with a sigh as they walk away, the rush of new love coursing through her veins. 

But it isn’t new love; it’s an old love, one that’s been around since the moment they shook hands. 

Better late than never.

  
  



	15. “Come on, baby, up to bed.”

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For @kyouryokusenshi
> 
> #84 on a drabble list: “Come on, baby, up to bed.”

It’s that brief window of time in the middle of the night where everything stills, everything quiets. Everything except the crying infant, that is.

Part of Scully is loathe to get out of bed; to leave the warmth of the blankets and Mulder’s arms and pad across the room to retrieve the baby but the other part of her loves this new normal.

Mulder doesn’t stir and she pushes the blankets aside, picking up Lily and taking her downstairs for a feeding so as not to wake him. 

The baby settles in to nurse and the quiet returns. Scully loves the quiet. Even back in the old days, when she’d lie alone in bed in her Georgetown apartment reflecting on whatever events had transpired that day, she could find solace in the still of the night.

Some nights Mulder would call; the placidity broken by a single piercing ring she’d always answer immediately, knowing it would be him. 

There was comfort in that; in knowing it would always be him.

She watches their baby nestled against her breast, thinking of the last time she did this, with their son. How Mulder wasn’t by her side, and how the phone would still ring but it would never be him. It couldn’t be. 

There was comfort in that, too: in knowing for certain she would never answer and be disappointed.

Lily’s eyes close and the suckling ceases as she drunkenly falls away from Scully’s nipple, a single drop of milk on her bottom lip. Her fists curl, her small puffs of breath and twitching eyelids indicating dreaming. Scully’s scientific brain takes over.

Do babies dream? What do they dream of? Not images, surely, but more like a feeling, perhaps: something abstract. Babies only know feelings, really: security or insecurity. Happiness or pain. Love or fear.

But this little one will never know fear; not if Scully can help it. 

This new baby holds a new promise: the promise of a hopeful future ahead for them. And in the still of the night, listening to the crickets chirping outside their cozy house, she not only wants to believe; she truly believes it.

She hears Mulder on the stairs, traipsing down to find his girls. She cranes her neck to look over her shoulder at him, disheveled, hair rumpled. That sleepy face she loves so much.

“Hey,” he says gently.

“Mmm?” she asks, as her head droops backwards onto the headrest of the couch. His hand finds her red tresses and he combs them gently.

“Come back to bed.”

“Just two more minutes,” she says. She wants to enjoy every second. “Sit next to me.”

He does. They sit and enjoy the nothingness.

“You know, it’s the witching hour, Scully,” he says.

“Every hour with a newborn is the witching hour.”

He nods, conceding. “Point taken. But now is the time we’re most likely to witness something supernatural.” His eyes narrow. “Whaddya think, Scully? Demons? Ghosts?”

“This little bundle is enough of a supernatural occurrence for me,” she says quietly. 

He looks down at his sleeping daughter and shrugs. She knows he can’t disagree. Her eyes find his as he leans in, giving her a kiss chaste enough not to hint at anything on the immediate horizon other than sleep, but loaded enough to indicate the promise of tomorrow morning.

If the baby lets them.

She rests her head on his shoulder and they sit, the three of them. The three pieces of Fox Mulder’s final puzzle.

The night is silent and still. 

“Come on, baby, up to bed,” he whispers after a minute or so. 

She acquiesces, standing, following him back to the warmth of their unremarkable bed. 

The “baby” is what does it. He could be talking to her, he could be talking to the baby. She’ll probably never know, and she’ll certainly never care.


	16. "Dogs don't wear clothes!"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt #47 from @RoseThornhill "Dogs don't wear clothes!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mulder loves to dress up Daggoo and Scully hates it (it is known). Here's a little origin story for that, just for you, Alyse. xo

  
  
  
When he opens the door, she’s standing there, holding a tiny ball of fur. He’s confused for a moment, but only because she hasn’t been here in months. 

Then he remembers: _the dog_. The tiny dog she’d stolen from the shelter. The one he’d agreed to keep for her because her apartment wouldn’t allow it. 

"Hi,” she smiles, a bit nervous. 

“Hi,” he smiles back, his surprise at her presence evident. 

“Is this a bad time?”

“Not at all,” he says. He’s always happy to see her.

He holds the door open, but she doesn’t step foot inside. She sets the dog down and it scampers into the living room, sniffing every corner, barking happily.

Mulder scratches his ear. “Is it…”

“ _He_ , Mulder. It’s a he.” 

“ _He…_ house trained?” he corrects himself, allowing the impact of this huge decision he’d made in a split second to hit him. He’s fully committed to this relatively small thing, this actually huge thing. He will not let her down, not ever again.

“He seems to be,” she shrugs. “For the twenty four hours or so he stayed at my place he didn’t have a single accident.”

“Ah,” Mulder sighs with relief. “A good boy, then.” He remembers Queequeg, who was not such a good boy.

“He’s a very good boy,” she parrots, the corner of her mouth quirking upwards in spite of herself.

Scully picks up a box next to her on the porch and holds it out to him. “I bought a bunch of toys and stuff for him. I don’t want him chewing on your shoes or the furniture.” 

He looks at her thoughtfully. It’s a Freudian slip, surely. Why would she care what happens to furniture she no longer sits on? Sleeps on? Lives on?

“Okay,” Mulder says, taking the box.

“I just took him to the vet and he’s up to date on all his shots. And there’s a bed and a bunch of dog food in the car, if you wouldn’t mind…” she gestures to her car and he nods, setting the box down just inside the doorway. He glances back inside the house where the dog is already snuggled into the couch, breathing softly. Could he really be asleep already? 

Mulder follows Scully out to the Explorer and hoists two heavy bags of dog food out of the back. She pulls out the dog bed and closes the hatchback. They walk back to the house and he sets the bags on the porch. Birds titter cheerfully in the dogwoods and it doesn’t feel right; he can’t believe she’s just going to turn around and leave him again, go to some place that isn’t here. Some place that isn’t home.

“Thank you, Mulder, for doing this,” she says gratefully. “If it ever becomes too much please let me know and I’ll re-home him.”

He looks at her, shaking his head. Maybe Scully can’t stay but her dog isn’t going anywhere. 

“He is home.”

She gives him a tiny smile, but he still sees those eyes that he’s been seeing over the past few months; the sad ones. Her beautiful eyes shouldn’t look that way. He knows he’s responsible, at least partly. He wishes he could stop hating himself for it.

His hand reaches up, more out of habit than anything, to touch her face, her cheek. He wants to tell her _you are home, too_. _Anytime you want to come home, Scully, I’ll be ready._

She closes her eyes and allows it but makes no move to reciprocate. After a couple seconds he pulls his hand away, the moment over.

“You want to come in?” he asks, unwilling to believe she’s ready to drive away. “Help me set this stuff up?”

She nods and agrees, and he hopes it’s more out of desire than obligation.

When she crosses the threshold and enters his space he feels it in his bones. It’s powerful, almost corporeal, the feeling she belongs here. 

Daggoo is, in fact, already fast asleep on the couch. 

“So he’s... a sleeper, I see,” Mulder laughs.

“He fell asleep at the vet, too. Right in the middle of the exam. I think he might suffer from narcolepsy.”

“Canine narcolepsy, huh?” Mulder grins. 

“Let’s add it to the stack of files in the office,” she chuckles. She sits on the couch awkwardly, her hands on her lap. He’s noticed this lately, about her demeanor. She keeps her hands close to her body, where they’re safe. Maybe it’s how she stays safe around him.

Mulder lifts the box of doggy stuff over to the coffee table. Daggoo doesn’t stir.

“Leash, bowls, poop baggies…” he lists off the items as he removes them from the box. “Where are his clothes?”

Scully blinks. “Clothes?”

“Uh, yeah,” Mulder says playfully, as if the absence of dog clothing is among the world’s worst offenses.

“Mulder, dogs don’t wear clothes,” she says with an air of exhaustion that reminds him of the olden days. The way she used to be.

“Yes, Scully, they do,” he insists. 

“This one doesn’t.” She glances in Daggoo’s direction, the dog snoring softly. Her hand reaches out to softly stroke his back.

“Hey,” Mulder says, slighted. “He’s my dog, too, now, isn’t he?”

She narrows her eyes and gives him a small smile. “Yes.”

“Okay, so if I want to buy him a sweater, I’m allowed, right?”

She sets her jaw. “I suppose so.”

“All right, then,” he says in that _well it’s settled_ tone he likes to use when she can’t prove him wrong. “And later, Daggoo and I are going to head to the city to pick out his new wardrobe.”

“You’re doing this just to annoy me, aren’t you?” she asks. 

“It’s definitely within the realm of possibility.”

She shakes her head, can’t help but smile. He sits down next to her and pets the dog, not because he wants to, necessarily, but because this is what he’s resorted to: finding excuses to get his hands near Scully. Sure enough, his hand bumps into hers and thankfully, charitably, she doesn’t recoil. 

“This kind of feels like a custody battle,” she jokes. 

He grins. “Not a battle. A difference of opinion,” he clarifies. The only battle he’s ever waged with regard to Scully is the one he’s currently fighting to get her back.

She helps him find a good place for the doggy dishes, the bed, the other items. Only a few minutes pass but it feels like every second is precious; every second she’s here counts as progress.

“I’d better get going,” she says when they’ve run out of tasks to accomplish. He wonders if she’s always felt this way; that he only wants her around to help him _do_ something. He knows it isn’t true, not really, but in his darker moments he tends to self-reflect. He hasn’t been used to doing that, at least not before she left him.

“You don’t have to go,” he protests, perhaps a bit more desperately than his deeply rooted masculinity would typically allow. “I mean… you can stay. A little longer. If you want to.”

Her smile is genuine and warm, but still sad. “I’d like to, but I should really go.” She gives no reason. 

He feels another little piece of his heart detach, fly across the room and adhere to hers. It hurts watching her walk out the door, just as much as it did the first time.

“Scully,” he says suddenly. She stops, turns around, her hand on the knob.

“Hm?”

His mouth drops open, hangs there like a flytrap. He wants to say so much but everything about her body language indicates she’s not ready to hear it.

“Aren’t you going to say goodbye to Daggoo?” he finds himself saying, stupidly. She glances over to the sleeping pup, who at that very moment lets out a snore as if to punctuate his disinterest.

She lets go of the doorknob and steps over to Mulder, looking him right in the eye. Without a word, she closes the distance between them, wrapping her arms around his midsection and holds him tightly. Her head nestles beneath his chin and she takes a deep breath, exhaling contentedly.  

“Thank you,” she whispers again.

He hasn’t held her this way, really held her, in so long. He’s afraid to let go.

They stand together in the middle of the silent house, the ticking of the clock and the dripping of the leaky kitchen faucet he hasn’t had the will to fix in weeks the only sounds. He smells her hair because he must; his senses are flooded with Scully and he misses her with an anguish he can’t program, categorize or easily reference.

After what feels like minutes she releases him, and if only for a moment he sees his Scully, the old Scully in her eyes. The one he used to make happy, at least fairly.

“See you tomorrow, Mulder,” she says. “I know you’re terrible with that new phone of yours but send me pictures, okay?”

“I will,” he nods. It’s all he can do for her. “I promise.”

She leaves the house again, and takes that little piece of his heart with her. But the scent of her on his shirt remains, which will get him through a few more days. And the dog, too, which will get him through the rest of them. 

As many days as it takes to get her to stay.

  
  



	17. "Please put your penis away."

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt from @monikafilefan... this one's for you, girl.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains explicit material.

  
  
“Have I told you how fucking fantastic you look tonight, Scully?” he asks, tugging her hand as they walk up the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. 

It’s deserted, probably thanks to the chill in the air. But freedom keeps them out here tonight. A few weeks have passed since Mulder got an official reprieve from the FBI and it feels good to come out of hiding. 

She makes a confused face, squeezes his hand. “Thanks, I guess.” She’s wearing jeans and an oversized pea coat. Nothing special to her, probably. But to him, she always looks fucking fantastic.

As they enter the memorial, Lincoln’s enormous eyes watch them. They’ve never come here together, not inside, at least. Scully studies the statue wordlessly, perhaps reading the inscription, perhaps thinking about something else. He thinks of the history surrounding this particular president. He thinks of freedom. 

His eyes dart around surreptitiously. There’s no one around. He’s feeling adventurous.

He turns to cup her face in his hands, sweeping her hair behind her ears, and with his kiss presses her back firmly against a marble column. He can feel the cool night breeze on his face and a scent hangs in the air that is unmistakably Washington DC. 

A scent that’s unmistakably freedom.

Fox Mulder and Dana Scully, out in the world, free at last. 

The kiss deepens slowly, blood pumping through his veins headed in only one direction. He can feel her smiling against his lips but she pushes him back gently, casting her eyes behind him. 

“What is it?” he asks softly in that voice he knows will typically render her to mush.

“We’re in public.”

He doesn’t care that they’re in public; in fact, that only turns him on even more. A memory of a youthful indiscretion atop Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s grave stirs and he has a sudden desire to replace it with something else. Something better. 

The ability to be out like this without fear of capture, the only concern being arrested for public indecency, is making him even harder.

He wants to be oh, so indecent.

“So? There’s no one here.” He shifts them so they’re on the other side of the column, the president their only voyeur. His lips travel down to her neck, and he wraps his arms around her waist, beneath her coat, his burgeoning erection pressed against her thigh. 

“So... no, Mulder,” she says firmly. “Please put your penis away.”

“Too late for that, Scully,” he says throatily into her ear, trying that voice one more time. She may not be easily swayed when it comes to the paranormal but when it comes to sex she is and they both know it. He pulls back, giving her the look that means business.

Her eyebrow lifts and she looks at him skeptically.

“Mulder.”

He can tell she’s intrigued. He’s seen this look a thousand times: the look that says _you’re wrong, Mulder, you’re definitely wrong this time._

_Except maybe… maybe you’re right._

She suddenly removes her leather gloves and stuffs them into her pocket. She raises her hand up next to his face and gives him a gentle wave.

“All right, you asked for it,” she says. She looks him right in the eye, smiling wickedly. 

And then her hand is undoing his jeans, plunging into his pants, her frigid fingers wrapping around his cock. He draws a sharp breath and yelps.

“Ah! Fuck, Scully!” He instinctively recoils from the sensation but she wastes no time, her hand going to work, her other wrapping around his back, keeping him close. It’s freezing and almost painfully uncomfortable but the way she’s stroking him, his eyes close and _fuck_ … the cold stops mattering. All that matters is her hand, her tiny, cold little hand that’s getting warmer by the second.

His eyes fly open and he focuses on the way she sucks her bottom lip into her mouth, biting it, her eyes looking up at him full of lust, now completely on board with this little adventure.

Her hand works every surface of his rapidly warming extremity, gliding across his shaft like silk, reaching underneath to cup his balls as his eyes bulge, half reacting to the chill and the other half so close to coming it feels embarrassing. 

He’d forgone gloves this evening and figures turnabout is fair play. He slides his own hand up underneath her sweater, palming her breast through the thin material of her bra, feeling an erect nipple beneath the pad of his thumb. She gasps, reacting by pulling him even harder, and the game is on.

His lips find her own again and her mouth opens to his, moaning audibly, echoing within the walls of the memorial. 

“ _Oh, god… Mulder..._ ”

He moves his hand down to her fly, unbuttoning it quickly and hearing her gasp again in what he can now identify as elated anticipation.

“ _Yes, please…_ ”

Fuck, he loves it when she begs. He can barely get his fingers inside her underwear, slipping them wetly between her folds when her hand jerks around him and he knows he’s going to come. He’s going to come right now.

He’s suddenly cognizant of the fact that he’s going to blow his load right here in front of Honest Abe, and there’s absolutely nothing he can do about that. 

“Scully—“ he moans into her ear and spurts hotly into her hand, his arm bracing them both against the column as his busy fingers slow. He breathes heavily against her, kissing her neck just below her ear.

Thanking the god he doesn’t believe in that the mess seems to be contained to the inside of his shorts, he only gives himself a few seconds to recover before starting to explore Scully’s depths once again. Usually he’d want to make it last, but he’s exhausted and spent and he wants her to get there, too. And soon.

They are in public, after all.

His thumb finds her clit right as she’s withdrawing her own hand, wiping it clean on the band of his underwear. She grips his torso beneath his shirt, squeezing it _oh god…_ and he can tell she’s close, too. He knows her routine by heart at this point. 

Scully throws her head back against the column, lifting one leg up to wrap around his waist, obscured beneath his own coat, giving him better access. “ _Jesus…”_ She seems to be reaching her peak more quickly than usual and he wonders if the whole “public indecency” thing is turning on the endlessly rebellious Dana Scully as much as it does him.

“Fuck, Mulder, yes…” she’s no longer whispering, outside of herself, her words bouncing around the cavernous halls. He pushes his mouth into her clavicle, sucking all around her neck, and just as he starts to worry this could take longer than he thinks she begins to quake around him, gyrating her hips like mad, fucking his fingers as she rides the wave of her orgasm into shore.

She finishes and pulls him into her, draping her body around his like a rag doll. He can feel her heartbeat thudding between her wet walls, in time with his own, and enjoys it so much he doesn’t remove his hand quite yet.

“That was the worst idea ever,” she whispers into his ear. 

“Yeah, I’m pretty mad about it myself,” he grins, placing a kiss to her temple.

“ _Hey! You two!_ ”

A flashlight beam bounces on the wall next to them and in this moment, although there would be absolutely no confusion about what they’re up to, he’s exceedingly grateful for their enormous coats which at least conceal the brunt of their temerity.

He peeks around the column to see a guard striding towards them. His hand is literally still inside of Scully.

“What’s going on here?” asks the guard, needlessly.

“Oh, so sorry, sir…” Scully begins. “We just got a little caught up. We’re leaving now.” She slaps Mulder on the back as he withdraws his fingers from her slickness, loathe to do so. They fumble with their pants and he takes her hand, moving around the column and brushing past the guard. 

“Have a nice night,” Mulder says politely as they pass. He swears as they leave he can hear the guard muttering _they don’t pay me enough…_

Neither speaks a word until they are down the stairs, across the street, well out of earshot, but when he opens his mouth to say something only laughter comes out. 

“Wow, Mulder,” she grins. “In all the excitement we’ve encountered, I can’t quite recall anything that’s given me that precise rush.”

He brings her hand up to his lips, kissing it. He can still smell her on his fingers. His cock twitches.

“Let’s do it again,” he says with a salacious grin. “I can think of a few more presidents I’d like to offend.”

  
  
  



	18. The Ghillie Suit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sentence prompt from anon:
> 
> “It’s okay, Mulder. We need a new (piece of furniture) anyway.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains explicit material.

 

  
  
“...No, you have not worn that around me,” she says as they enter the house amongst peals of laughter. “I’m sure if you did, I’d make you take it off.”

He shuts the door and grins in that same way he did back in Henrico County: shit-eating, knows-too-much. Knows it all.

Knows he has her in the palm of his hand.

“Not like that,” she amends quickly, before he has a chance to pick up her unintentional innuendo and run away with it.

Mulder tosses his keys onto the end table and Scully takes her jacket off, eyeing him, much to his apparent surprise and delight. This date isn’t over yet. She means to stay. 

“I think if you saw me in the ghillie suit, you’d be unable to resist me, Scully.”

She crosses her arms, raises an eyebrow. “Oh, really?”

He shrugs. “It’s a mathematical certainty.”

He’s probably right. Camouflage suits them both: for him, a hairy sasquatch hunting costume, for her, keeping her true feelings hidden from him constantly.

“Challenge accepted,” she says, amazed at her own bravery. 

He grins. “Give me a minute,” he winks, and disappears around the corner, into the laundry room. 

She walks around the living room for a couple of minutes, surveying the state of it. It hadn’t always been this messy. When she was still around, before Mulder fell into the deepest of his funks, it had been relatively tidy. He had been steadily improving at unclouding his mind and along with it uncluttering the house.

Most of the mess tonight was still thanks to the Russians. She’d been helping him sift through the aftermath for weeks. She can smile now in hindsight; that the act of being nearly killed had once again brought them closer together, closer to normal, or at least whatever their normal is nowadays. She doesn’t know what counts as normal anymore.

“Okay, Scully, come check it out,” he calls from the laundry room. She goes to look and sure enough, there stands Mulder in all his ghillie glory. 

The suit is as ridiculous as she expected but there’s something about the way Mulder’s eyes twinkle while he wears it that melts her. He sports a lopsided grin and cocks his head to the side and she feels it again: that sensation she’s been experiencing for the past several months. The sensation of falling in love with him all over again.

“You wear Wookiee well,” she grins. “I’ll admit it.”

“So… wrong again, eh, Scully?” 

She crosses her arms and smiles, shaking her head. “You are pretty damn irresistible.”

He opens his arms wide. “Then bring it in, Skulls,” he says. “Un-resist me.”

Insisting she has no interest in hugging him while he’s wearing this ridiculous outfit would be a flat-out lie, so she steps forward into his embrace and receives a legitimate bear hug. The rough faux-shrubbery tickles her cheek and she giggles.

“This suit smells weird,” she points out.

“Well, it’s spent hours laying in ditches and absorbing my musky man-scent,” he chuckles. The musky-man scent is certainly not what she’s smelling, as she’s quite familiar with and pleased by that particular smell, so she pulls away.

“Okay, you got your hug. You won the bet. Now what?”

His eyes drift down her shirt, which to her unfortunate sudden realization is white. And now, filthy.

“Shit, I got your shirt dirty,” he says. “Sorry about that.”

She tries to wipe the dirt off to no avail.

“I can… go get you something… else to wear…?” he stammers. In the ghillie suit it’s even more adorable. “Upstairs?”

He makes to move past her and while she appreciates his ability to put his gentlemanly urges above his not-so gentlemanly urges, she knows where this is headed and she wants to believe he does, too.

She stops him gently with her hand, shaking her head. “There’s a washing machine right here, Mulder,” she says simply, as if she’s solved the mysteries of the pyramids.

She strips her shirt off: slowly, teasingly. Mulder stares at her as she stands before him clad in only tight jeans and a bra and while this is nothing new lately, while they’ve certainly been more intimate than they have in a very long while over the past couple of weeks, somehow standing here in their old home with intent she can feel surging to her core is slightly scary. 

She holds out her shirt to him and he takes it, realizing despite her libido she actually does want her blouse cleaned, and he turns around to open the washer, fumbling with the detergent, throwing a pile of standby laundry in with it and starting the machine. She chuckles to herself at his eagerness.

He spins back around as the washer rumbles behind him; that sweet, familiar sound of domesticity, of _normal_ , when it was just him and her in this house letting life go by without them for once. When things were simple and wonderful. 

She steps out of her jeans and inches forward, putting her hands on his chest, sliding them upward through the strands of tactile Mulder-ness, no longer caring about the smell or the itchiness or the dirt. Just wanting to get at what’s underneath it.

“You’re gonna get dirty again,” he remarks.

She bites her lip. “ _I don’t think that’s going to be a problem.” “That’s the idea.” “I certainly hope so.”_ All possible clever flirty responses that enter her mind but instead she says nothing, mesmerized by how the word “dirty” escapes his extremely kissable mouth.

She can tell from his eyes he still isn’t sure if this is really happening, the same way he’s looked at her ever since Henrico County. As if he can’t believe his luck every single time. 

As if he’s worried she’s ready to bolt again.

She wraps her arms behind him, this time looking for a zipper or whatever it is that keeps this thing on his body. “How the hell do we get this thing off?” she asks.

“Hmm. I think at this point just a few quick strokes ought to do it, to be honest,” he says, quirking up a brow.

“Mulder, shut up.”

He turns around. “It’s velcro.”

“ _Velcro_ , Mulder?”

“Industrial strength. You gotta really work at it.”

She does, and he’s not wrong. With an extremely unsexy * _rrriiiippppp*_ the suit is off, however, and drops to the floor. He steps out of it and kicks it aside, and as he turns back around she falls into his warm chest instantly, eyes closing, inhaling deeply, the scent of him, _Mulder_ , second nature even after their years apart. 

She won’t lie to herself anymore about how much she misses him. About how every night she spends alone in her bed now is torture; absolute torture to not be entwined with him, his breath in her ear, his heart beating right next to hers. 

Her arms snake around his bare back and she slides her hands over his muscles; around his latissimus dorsi, down to his obliques, his exquisite fifty-five year old obliques that have no right being as perfectly toned as they are.

Spinning them both around, he lifts her up onto the machine and goes right for her neck, brushing aside her hair and planting gentle kisses from just beneath her ear, down to her clavicle, sucking the pendant of her cross necklace into his mouth for just a moment before releasing it and kissing the hollow of her throat thoroughly. 

Her eyes close as her body adjusts to the gentle oscillation beneath her most sensitive parts, priming her, and she feels Mulder’s hands as they grip the flesh of her ass, bringing her flush against his stomach.

His fingers drag softly along her thigh, from her hip to her knee, raising gooseflesh along her skin. He curves his fingers under her leg and lifts it up, and she takes the hint, wrapping her legs around him. Their height difference has always made sex in certain positions difficult but neither of them have ever shied away from a challenge, particularly Mulder. 

Bracing himself with one strong arm, he leans her back with his other arm behind her, his wandering mouth finding a pert nipple protruding brazenly through the thin fabric of her bra. He worries it with his tongue over the fabric, and the combination of his hot breath and the angle of her ass on the machine sends shockwaves through her body.

“ _Jesus…_ ” she moans, inhaling sharply, the whirring, pulsing motion beneath her amplifying her pleasure. 

“The name’s Mulder,” he says into her breast, the sound muffled.

“Shut up, Mulder,” she says again, barely getting the words out. He moves his kisses down to her stomach, shucking off her panties so quickly she doesn’t process it and adjusting the position of her legs so they now rest atop his shoulders. He genuflects down before her, she his goddess and he her worshipper, and begins tasting her exposed sex with his eager tongue.

She falls backwards, hitting the dials of the washing machine, hearing beeps and boops of some kind but caring very, very little while Mulder’s tongue is inside her. The machine makes a loud clanking noise, and she ignores it, because who cares.

“Oh, god… _Mulder…_ ” she cries out, the dueling sensations of the machine and his tongue almost too much, it’s too much… she grips his shoulder with one hand, a handful of his hair with the other, the view of his perfect golden-toned muscles slightly undulating with his movements like a desert view from the back of a bouncing camel...

* _clank… clank*_

“Mulder, I’m gonna…”

The machine starts rocking beneath her and she knows something is wrong but he isn’t stopping and she’s certainly not interested in letting him.

He clamps down on her clit and sucks ferociously like he’s shelling a sunflower seed— _fuck,_ why did he waste all this talent on a goddamn snack when she was right next to him for so long— and her hips buck wildly as she comes hard into his mouth.

At the same time, the washing machine makes a loud THUMP then a sad, somewhat defeated noise, and comes to a shuddering halt.

Mulder stands, planting his arms at either side of her as she wraps her legs around his middle once again, pulling him into her.

“You broke it, Scully,” he smirks. Her heartbeat pounds between her legs and he’s nestled up against her, right against her, rock hard. 

“I’m sorry,” she breathes, face flushed, somewhat embarrassed but at the same time completely passive. She lays her head on top of his shoulder and he combs his fingers through her hair. “It’s okay, Mulder. We need a new washing machine anyway.”

The word flies from her mouth before she has a chance to stop it, like a habit, routine. 

 _We_. 

It’s the second Freudian slip she’s made in the last few weeks.

_Our home._

She can’t see Mulder but can feel his gaze, as ever. He’s certainly noticed her slip up because this new Mulder, this inexplicable creature she’s being reintroduced to, notices these things.

“You said ‘we,’ Scully,” he says softly into her ear. It’s not like them to call something like this out into the open but he does it anyway. 

“I did,” she replies, because… well, she did. She suddenly has a sneaking suspicion that along with age comes courage in ample supply, for both of them. 

“And a few weeks ago, you said ‘our home.’”

She doesn’t live here anymore and they both know it. But it’s always going to be theirs, together, regardless of logistics. “My name is still on the deed, isn’t it?”

He nods. “That it is.”

He leans back in to kiss her, and she’d almost forgotten how much she loves tasting herself on Mulder’s tongue. Almost.

She reaches around to cup his ass, pulling him against her even more firmly. His erection throbs between her legs but he hasn’t even acknowledged it.

“You staying over tonight?” he asks, and her immediate response of a nod in the affirmative surprises neither of them.

“After a welcome like that, it would be rude not to, I think,” she laughs. He kisses her again, unable to help himself. 

“We still have to take care of you, Mulder,” she says, quite eager to return the favor. Just the thought of sliding him into her wet mouth is making her insides quake again, machine or no machine.

“I’m perfect, Scully,” he replies, shaking his head. “I’m absolutely perfect.”

 _That you are_ , she thinks. But he’ll get his, she knows, no matter what he says. 

“Take me to bed,” she whispers into his ear, and he obliges, lifts her up, carries her upstairs. They’ll lay in their bed together for the first time in years tonight, and fall into a deep, blissful sleep.

Eventually.

 


	19. "We'll get through this, I promise."

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Scully confronts Mulder after he reveals he'd tested her ova. (Per Manum)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt from @frangipanidownunder: #23 “We’ll get through this, I promise”

 

  
  
  
He knew that look: _the look_ , the one she gave him as the elevator doors slid shut. It was the look Dana Scully gave when she wanted to be alone; to cry, to rage, to let out all that emotion that was typically bottled up so tight he could never quite twist hard enough to set it loose.

Part of him felt incredibly guilty for what he knew she saw as a betrayal: withholding the information about her stolen ova had seemed like a good idea at the time, but he had clearly been wrong. The other part of him just didn’t care right now; he wanted to gather her up in his arms and never let go. He wanted to take care of her, even though he knew she’d hate that.

Mulder had always had a selfish streak, but that streak was made starker when Scully was involved. When things got too personal.

He waited in the basement for what felt like hours, trying and failing to read case files. Wondering when she’d come back. If she’d come back. Was she up on Pennsylvania Avenue, directly above him, walking this off? Was she crying in the bathroom? Did she go home?

He looked at the clock. _4:47_. He wasn’t getting any work done today, that was for sure. Just when he’d decided to pack up his shit and head home to his dark, lonely apartment the door to the office burst open, revealing Scully.

And she was pissed.

“You had no right!” she cried, approaching him, tears threatening to fall. The restrained annoyance she’d tried to hide in the elevator had evolved, to say the least. 

She fixed him with a look he hated, he _hated_ when she was angry with him. It was even worse when she was absolutely correct. “You, of all people… I can’t believe you’d keep this from me, after everything we’ve been through.”

She stood on the other side of his desk, arms crossed, her usual protective stance. He stood, making to move around the desk to go to her but she fixed him with a glare that meant she knew what he was up to; that his lanky, lumbering Mulder frame and big, strong man-arms weren’t going to do the trick this time. He remained still.

“I don’t know what to say, Scully.” His mouth felt completely dry. “I’m sorry.”

“If you hide the truth from me, you’re working against me, isn’t that what you once said to me, Mulder?”

His mouth hung open, ashamed. He’d felt entitled to her fears, to her pain, during the time when she was dying of cancer. And he couldn’t seem to stop himself from hiding things from her. It was a shitty double standard he hadn’t even realized he was holding.

He knew she was in the right, of course she was. He had no recourse but his own truth: that he’d rather die than do anything that would hurt her. Than _say_ anything that would hurt her. He honestly didn’t think that feeling would ever go away, ever. He loved her too damn much. How could he tell her that, though, especially now? And more to the point, why did his own feelings on this even matter? 

“I’m sorry,” he offered again, although he knew it wasn’t enough. “I knew there was nothing to be done, that it would only hurt you. I was just trying to protect you, Scully.”

“I’m a big girl, Mulder,” she spat, her stare permafrost. 

“I know that, I know.” 

A tear fell down her cheek and she wiped at it angrily. She was crying now, actively crying, and as much as she tried to mask her feelings with anger he knew deep down she was just completely, utterly miserable. She’d already received terrible news, she’d had to hear it from her doctor yet again, and then to top it all off her best friend had betrayed her.

No longer able to hide the tears streaming down her face she turned away from him, the desk practically a metaphor for the wall that was currently dividing them. Her shoulders hitched, her tiny body hunched over in defeat. She was always in control, always, and her own body had turned against her once more. 

He hated seeing her this way. His Scully was not weak. His Scully did not give up. He felt so helpless he wanted to scream. 

“Scully…” was all he could say. But she said nothing. He half expected her to walk straight out the door, which was only a few feet from her, but she didn’t. 

Although he guessed she probably wanted him out of her sight, he couldn’t leave her this way. He wanted to give her what she wanted but he had to make her understand. So he stepped around the desk, coming up close behind her. He placed both hands on her shoulders and he felt her immediately relax, as if he’d applied some magical salve. She breathed in, breathed out, and then turned around wordlessly, crumpling into him. He held her, feeling forgiveness seeping out of her heart directly into his own like osmosis, and let her cry.

“I’m so sorry, Scully,” he whispered, his cheek pressed against the top of her head. He stroked her hair and closed his eyes. He could do nothing at all for her, not now. He wasn’t a magician. He wasn’t God. He was just Mulder.

“It’s okay, Mulder,” she said, a couple choked sobs punctuating her speech. “I know your intentions were honorable.”

“No, I mean… I’m sorry about that, of course, but…” he squeezed her tighter. “I mean, I’m _sorry_.”

He wasn’t sure if she took in the full weight of his meaning; if she was even aware of how guilty he felt for putting her in the position she was in daily. For being indirectly, and in this case directly, responsible for her pain. For his inability to properly communicate to her how much he cared about her, even though she deserved so much better than him. Or if maybe she only felt the sympathy of a friend.

“I’m afraid, Mulder,” she said into his chest. “I’m afraid to dredge this all up again.”

“This is exactly what I was trying to avoid, Scully,” he explained. “I don’t want to see you hurting like this.”

“In spite of these fears, though… I still want a second opinion,” she said, sniffling. He brought his thumb to her cheek to wipe her tears, he couldn’t help it.

“I got a second opinion, Scully,” he said. “And a third. And a fourth. I’ve been to nearly every clinic in the city.”

She shook her head. “Then we’ll get a fifth, Mulder.” She looked up at him. “I need to know. I need to hear the words.”

He knew it wasn’t that she didn’t trust him, it was much more than that. He’d taken away her choice, her right to learn the truth herself. He’d failed whatever test the universe had thrown at him in that moment, and he did not want to fail again.

_We’ll get a fifth._

Her suggestion that she wanted his involvement, that she trusted him to help her through this, was implicit. After years of dragging her through the unknown with him, this was something he could help her with; this was something he could give to her, that little slice of normal. That readiness to allow it to be her turn, for once. 

He didn’t need to be a magician, or God, to do that. Fox Mulder could do that. 

“Okay,” he said. “We’ll get a fifth.” And, because she herself had opened the door with her utterance of _we_ , he felt brave enough to say it. “We’ll get through this, I promise.”

  
  
  
  



	20. morning kisses

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt from anonymous: morning kisses!

You aren’t sure if you’re dreaming. Your wrist tingles, but in a pleasant way, like snowflakes softly falling against your skin. The sensation continues up your forearm and although you’re desperate to enjoy it your first instinct is fear; you’ve been kidnapped far too many times. Maybe you’re strapped to a dental chair in a rusty hollowed out camper. Maybe this chill is some kind of intravenous fluid meant to incapacitate you.

Maybe you’re about to die.

You try reaching for your firearm but you’re unable to move.  _ Hypnagogia, perhaps _ ? The feeling has traveled to your neck and you attempt to force yourself awake. But now a familiar scent permeates your senses and you suddenly relax, feeling safe. Comfortable.

It’s just Mulder. 

Mulder, who subdued a criminal twice his size just yesterday. Mulder, who spends his days wrapped up in conspiracy and his nights wrapped up in you. 

Mulder, who constantly leaves you behind, somehow paying penance for it each time you end up in his bed.

What you’re feeling are his lips. They dust your throat softly and then your cheeks, then your nose. Back down to your clavicle.  

_ Sternohyoid. Trapezius. Deltoid.  _

There are moments you wonder about what kind of future you could have with him. There are moments you even worry. But then moments like these arrive when the world stops. Time stands still for Fox Mulder’s kisses.

He hasn’t noticed you’ve awoken, as your eyes are still closed, and you can now feel his fingers sweeping the hair away from your forehead, leaning in to kiss you there. He sits back a bit and you can see him in your mind’s eye, propped up on one elbow, just watching. 

You open one eye to see if you’re right, and you are.

“Hi,” he says. Your other wrist is in his hand and he brings it to his mouth. It sends you somewhere otherworldly, this newfound romantic side of him. You’re pretty sure his kiss could wake the dead.

“Hi.”

You  _ have _ been dead, it seems, for a while now. At least the parts of you that craved him for all these years have been. But now you wonder why you waited so long to let him resuscitate you. To let him make you feel alive.

“I’m sorry I woke you,” he mumbles sleepily against your clavicle as he presses his lips there again. 

“No, Mulder,” you say, holding onto him by the back of his neck, whispering softly. “I’m sorry I stayed asleep for so long.”


	21. Mistletoe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Kissing in a stairwell, giving them an artificial height difference.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one is for you, @gaycrouton. I went canon-divergent on your ass too, look at me! Merry Christmas! xoxo

 

  
  


She isn’t sure how they ended up here.

One second, Mulder is tucking a couple of X-Files underneath his arm, headed home to what would surely be a melancholy evening surrounded by crappy sci-fi movies and gurgling mollies, and the next she is opening the door to her mother’s house, inviting him in. In here, to where family is, where warmth and home and the very personal resides.

He holds a fruitcake--  _ a fruitcake, for fuck’s sake _ \-- and hugs Scully awkwardly. She laughs inwardly at his inability to behave normally in any kind of social situation; as if he searched for “ways to be a good holiday guest” on the internet before coming over.

“Fox!” Her mother approaches as if she’s got some kind of Mulder Radar. “So happy you could make it.”

“Thanks, Mrs. Scully,” he says, pulling her into another awkward hug and offering the sad fruitcake like some kind of entry fee. “Merry Christmas.” Her mother takes it gratefully, shooing them both into the living room where six eyes dart up in surprise. Her brother, Tara, their tiny son Matthew, all equally perplexed at the presence of a man standing next to her.

Mulder waves uncomfortably as Scully’s mother places a mug of hot cider between his hands (where did she even get it so quickly?) and soon they are side by side on the couch, next to the Christmas tree. Nat King Cole’s  _ Christmas Song _ pours forth and Scully chances a sidelong glance his way. 

It’s odd, very odd, for the two of them to be in such a normal, safe scenario.

It feels safe for a bit, but soon enough she needs a breather, just a moment to herself to process the very real ontological shock of her two worlds colliding. She goes upstairs, sits on her mother’s bed. It smells like cinnamon in here and she can hear choral hymns from below, possibly even laughter. Is Mulder making her family laugh? 

_ Deep breaths, Dana. _ Why is she so nervous?

She pads down the stairs, more laughter emanating from the living room. And suddenly, as she reaches the bottom step, Mulder is there. He’s wearing a Santa hat and a sly grin.

“Where’d you get that?” she asks.

He shrugs. “I’m Santa, Scully.”

“Are they driving you crazy with questions?” she asks.

“About?”

She shrugs. “Our work. Why you’re alone on Christmas.” She pins him with a look. “What we’re doing here together.”

“No, no incessant questioning, Scully. They’re less like you than I realized,” he grins.

She notices he’s wearing a green sweater she’s never seen him in before. “Were you wearing that before?”

He looks down, brushes a crumb of some sort off the front. “Oh, your mom gave it to me.”

“My mom.”

He nods.

“Gave you a sweater.”

“She made it,” he says, smiling. She blinks.

“My mom made you a sweater.” _ Is this real life? _

“Yeah, I just opened it. They didn’t want to start without you but I guess your mom couldn’t wait.”

She smiles in spite of herself. 

“Where’d you disappear to, by the way?” he asks.

“I was just upstairs, you know. Needed a couple minutes to myself.”

“Relax, Scully,” he says as he reaches out to take her hand. “Everyone’s behaving themselves. Even your brother.”

Her eyebrow goes up, then she notices his own eyes dart up, then back at her. His ears turn inexplicably pink, until she chances a look up as well, and there above them like a talisman dangles a sprig of mistletoe.

Fucking mistletoe.

They’ve been dancing around the inevitable for years and suddenly it seems fate has stepped in and practically grabbed them both by their skulls and slammed them together.  _ Do it, dummies _ , she hears in her own mind.

They have a conversation with their eyes before she has a chance to ignore this, move past it like they always do.

_ You wanna?  _ his eyes ask her. 

Her head tells her she’s unsure but her eyes must give him the go-ahead because he’s leaning in ever so slightly, tentatively, and her heart thrums with anticipation. Because she’s standing on a step their mouths are perfectly aligned, so she couldn’t go for his cheek or his forehead or some other safe place if she tried to.

And suddenly his lips are upon hers, so softly. She’s kissing Mulder. She can barely move, barely think. The only thing happening right now, anywhere in the world, is this kiss.

Her hand reaches out to gently touch his chest, her fingers softly treading the knit sweater beneath them. Tangible evidence of her mother practically welcoming him into the family. 

It’s endless, this connection, just like it seems the two of them always will be. She could sink into the plush softness of his lower lip like a pillow, like relief at the end of an interminable day. Like every day feels with him. 

Her mouth starts to open before she’s realized she’s done it and he responds, gently gliding his tongue along the inside of her upper lip. And before she can pretend this is a mistake, a lapse of judgment, before she can retreat again, her body betrays her.

“ _ Mmmm… _ ” she moans.

Propriety and rationality, her guiding lights, give way to her baser instincts as she parts her lips more confidently, plunging her tongue inside the forbidden cavern of his hot mouth. He grunts, pulling her against his pelvis, and because of their artificial heights she can feel the rigid length of him flush against her.

_ I’ve done this to him, me _ … she thinks. So many years wondering if he saw her in any way besides his work partner, so many years wanting to believe. It’s a small Christmas miracle, this evidence before her, inside his jeans. Her eyes fill with tears as she holds his eager body against her own and feels a hot rush straight to her sex as it weeps with desire. From a kiss, just a kiss.

No… from  _ this _ kiss.

Mulder smiles into her mouth, his eyes closed, and she hears him whispering her name,  _ Scully _ , verbal affirmation this is real and he isn’t fantasizing about someone else. He wants this as much as she does. 

He pushes her into the wall, not hard but assertively, and she gasps. His hand rests on her abdomen, making its way underneath her sweater, drifting up and up along her rib cage and suddenly they’re getting hot and heavy in the stairway of her mother’s house and anyone could walk in and see them at any second--

_ “Aiieee!!” _

A delighted shriek comes from the foyer and she rips apart from Mulder, his lips red and raw, his Santa hat askew. She looks over his shoulder to find Matthew bouncing in on an inflatable bumblebee.

An inflatable fucking bumblebee.

“Daddy!” he cries. “Santa! Santa’s here!” 

Bill rushes in to find what must surely be an unwelcome sight: his sister pinned against the wall while the man he hates more than anything has his hand up her shirt. His face turns a shade of red brighter than Mulder’s hat.

“What the hell is going on in here?!” He looks at Scully, then Mulder. Her lipstick covers his mouth in a telltale zig-zag.

“Um…” Mulder searches. “There was mistletoe.”

It’s really all the explanation that should be required. But Bill is not satisfied.

“So you decided to maul my sister in the hallway, Mr. Mulder?”

“Bill!” Scully admonishes. “Give it a rest, all right?” She grabs Mulder’s hand and steps down, leading him into the living room. Her mother watches them settle onto the couch, raising a knowing eyebrow.

“Are you two ready to open gifts?” she says. 

Still not quite sure what just happened and with a tremble in her fingers and a persistent ache between her thighs, she nods absently. “Yeah, let’s do it.”

As quickly as it started, the kiss is over. Bill corrals his son back into the living room towards the presents. “Just one tonight, Matty,” he says sternly. Matthew flings the inflatable bumblebee towards Mulder and it bounces off his leg, landing on its side.

Mulder leans over to whisper in Scully’s ear. “You and me and those bees, am I right?”

“At least we got there this time,” she says softly. She dares to glance his way, having been brave so far. They just look at each other for a moment, and then he smiles, that smile she knows he saves only for her.

“Merry Christmas, Scully,” he says. He reaches out to take her hand and the trembling stops.

_ At least we got there. _

“Merry Christmas, Mulder.”

  
  
  
  
  
  



	22. Mulder's spot

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt from Sculderfan: Wonder if you could write the first time Mulder guided Scully with his hand on her back? Could be fun.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey! This has been unfinished in my drafts forever and finally I was inspired by folks asking me on Twitter to fic this tweet: 
> 
> "Never Again- Scully beginning to realize her feelings for Mulder 
> 
> Milagro- coming to terms with those feelings 
> 
> All things- acting upon them"
> 
> Hope you enjoy how it turned out.

  
  


The first time he touches her there she is naked and trembling. She is afraid. 

His fingertips glide across her skin as he searches for the source of her fear, alleviating it as he goes. His touch calms her long before he reassures her what she’s afraid of are merely war wounds any sixth grade camper might sport after a weekend in the woods.

Mosquito bites. Just damn mosquito bites.

Mulder doesn’t know her very well yet but she’s sure he does know that Dr. Dana Scully wouldn’t show fear of the unknown in this way, especially so soon. After all the crap she’s given him over the past couple of days, she should feel a bit chagrined. Maybe even embarrassed. But she feels only comfort through his touch. 

She throws herself, actually throws herself into him and lets him hold her. She doesn’t know why, not really, because her fear is already gone. But her motives for all things are usually kept hidden, deep down where her feelings are. Deep down where she can’t even find them, let alone analyze them.

It’s the  _ Dana _ who propels forward into his arms two days into this partnership. It’s the  _ Dana _ who allows herself to get wrapped up into this man in her customary way.

But it’s the  _ Scully _ that keeps her here, in his embrace, as his fingers dip down to rest on the small of her back. Scully.  _ His _ Scully.

So soon.

The next time he does it, it’s already like a habit. She’s just learned Billy Miles has been wandering around in the woods on legs that shouldn’t work at all and her mind is racing. 

She lets it happen, lets his hand rest there, guiding her. She thinks of Daniel, who used to do this all the time and it felt controlling, almost fatherly. She’d liked that from time to time, but with Mulder it’s different. It isn’t a power move; it’s respect and belonging. She doesn’t like the idea of belonging to a man, never has, but when Mulder touches her there it feels like they belong to each other. She likes that feeling.

They continue this way for years; him taking his own tiny personal liberty, reconfiguring her reality, as if by mere touch he can alter her perception. Make her see things his way. And she allows it time and time again because she wants to see things his way. She likes belonging; to him. To  _ them _ , whatever  _ they _ happen to be. She doesn’t know yet, not really.

There’s always something situated between them; usually some sort of barrier resembling the elusiveness of the paranormal. Always something they cannot agree upon; something they refuse to face. Sometimes that barrier is the elusiveness of their own feelings.

And some days, some nights, they are far from each other. Like a stormy night in Philadelphia when she slips. Having become tired of a life that stands still, she goes and seeks out one that moves forward instead. A straight line. Stepping forward. Marking a moment.

She tries this guy on for size and he fits, at least at first; until his hands encircle her waist, fingers landing on the spot,  _ Mulder’s spot, _ still raw and tender from the needle; her act of rebellion. 

It felt good, all of it, up until now.

_Not everything is about you, Mulder._

A stranger touching her there feels wrong somehow, too intimate. Even more intimate than sex. She wonders why.

Two years later, another stranger enters her life. This stranger sees her to the point of unnerving her. He sees her innermost thoughts, her latent desires.

_ Agent Scully is already in love. _

She’s denied it for so long even the truth doesn’t feel real anymore. But the stranger is right, and she knows it. 

Mulder is quiet for a moment, then reaches out to touch the spot. It feels somehow new and exciting, even more intense now. A cold rush of truth serum injected at the base of her spine like an epidural.

She steps forward to exit the cell, another step forward, towards… something.

She isn’t afraid. He won’t know what Padgett meant, he won’t notice his deadly accuracy. 

Mulder never notices.

Men will come and go in the life of Dana Scully, but the  _ Daniels _ and  _ Eds _ and even _ Padgetts _ won’t stick. She knows this because they always disappear, they’re always gone, eventually, and Mulder is still here, right here, right next to her.

Not noticing.

More years go by, time passing in moments, and she is thrown into the path of Daniel once again. She’s changed so much yet here he is, exactly the same, still wanting Dana. 

But she isn’t Dana anymore, not really. She is Scully.

Mulder’s Scully. 

_ I’m not the same person, Daniel. I wouldn’t have known that if I hadn’t seen you again. _

Daniel brushes her hair out of her face the way Mulder would, to look into her eyes, to see her there, and in this particular moment she knows she doesn’t want anyone seeing her there except Mulder.

It’s funny the way all things happen, the way events unfold. The way dominoes fall, one by one, until the timing is right.

Tonight will be the night. Tonight, she will make him see.

Tonight she goes to him, rouses him from his sleep. Tonight she kisses him not the way a friend would, or the way a partner would, but the way a lover would. And the moment they make this leap, the moment she feels him inside her she closes her eyes and waits for what she knows is coming; for his beautiful hands to slide down her back and land on the spot. 

His spot.

He touches her there, and again, she is naked and trembling. But this time she is not afraid.

  
  
  



	23. Elevator kiss

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt from Kega Umi #4- An accidental brush of lips followed by a pause and going back for another, on purpose. And #22- A kiss that is leading to more, but is interrupted by a third party.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This takes place somewhere in S7, not really canon compliant but whatever 🥰😂

 

The elevator is crowded today. Like, really crowded. Too crowded.

Mulder wonders how he never noticed so many people work at the Hoover Building. It feels like every single employee is crammed into this one elevator right now.

The doors open and, unbelievably, two more people step on. He tries to spin out of the way but there’s literally nowhere for him to go and he suddenly finds himself pressed against Scully, her back to the wall, eyes looking up at him beneath long lashes. He loses his balance-  _ he swears-  _ and begins to tip towards her. His arm shoots out to brace himself against the wall before he crashes into her face, and in his attempt to right himself his lips brush up against her cheek, then drag across her lips.

A complete accident, honestly. He jerks his head back quickly, worried she might feel uncomfortable. But instead he hears her draw a breath, feels her chest puff out against his own. She does not pull away. Her eyes dart over to his arm and he can see her pupils dilate. 

_ *ding* _

The elevator doors open, mercifully, and like Moses parting the Red Sea the droves of employees file off the elevator, leaving them completely alone. 

The doors slam shut. The silence is deafening. Their eyes meet, lock onto one another’s. And for once in his godforsaken miserable lonely life the moment is seized rather than wasted: she rises up onto her tiptoes and pulls him down for more, more, more.

He groans as her mouth opens to his, her tongue gliding along his bottom lip. She isn’t asking for permission, she’s taking what she wants. This isn’t like the millennium, not at all. This is passion, this is fire. This is something different. 

He isn’t sure what started this but he has a sneaking suspicion his arm pinned to the side of her head had something to do with it; as if she’d lost all control when that happened. This isn’t Scully, at least not the Scully he knows. She doesn’t make out in elevators where they could certainly get caught. 

Truth be told, she doesn’t make out with him at all, ever. 

_ *ding* _

She gains ahold of herself, pulls back, softly panting. Her eyes don’t leave his own as a couple of people step onto the elevator. If they notice anything, they don’t let on.

_ What was that? _ Scully’s eyes say to his.

_ What do you think? _ he replies.  _ That was the inevitable, Scully, the only place this thing is headed now. _

He doesn’t know for sure how much she gleans from this ocular conversation, but her eyes soften, shift in color, practically. She does understand. It looks like hope.

Aware he’s still leaning into her with his arm locked next to her head unnecessarily, he straightens up, clears his throat. Smoothes out his suit, turns around, nods at the other occupants of the elevator. He swears one of them rolls her eyes.

Finally the elevator reaches the lobby, and he holds the door open for Scully to exit first. She straightens up herself and walks right past him with a grin.

He knows they won’t talk about this. But he’ll definitely be dreaming about it tonight. 

He smiles to himself. 

_ Your move, Scully. _

  
  



	24. Heading West, Heading Nowhere

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mulder's thoughts on that long drive from death row to New Mexico.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt from suitablyaggrieved: Here’s a prompt for you: Mulder (or Scully) hiding an injury/ an illness/ a secret, from the other person, which causes tension between them. Take your time, and thank you!

 

 

The road is long, leading only one direction: West. And there is only one destination: the truth. 

He already knows the truth. He simultaneously believes it and will not accept it. 

_ December 22nd, 2012. The end of all life on earth as we know it. _

Here he is, still, running towards the truth. He is the proverbial dog and “the truth” is the proverbial car. He’s always wondered what it would feel like when he finally caught it and now he wishes he hadn’t. 

Scully hasn’t brought it up since the jail cell; this secret he’s refused to divulge. And he hasn’t decided what to do yet, if he can even do anything. He can’t tell her, he can’t. His only option is to stop it somehow. His only option is to give her her life back. 

He still owes her everything. He will always owe Scully everything.

He’s reminded of the way he felt the last time the world had a shelf life. She was dying of cancer and he could see the end of her world, the end of his world. He’d held a gun to his own head, sobbing. Five billion other lives would continue when she was gone but his wouldn’t and he’d known it, even then. 

He grips the steering wheel and drives, the hum of the engine and the smell of the desert and the twinkle of a vast expanse of stars above him his only company. Scully is asleep in the passenger seat, has been for seven hours. The fifteen before that were spent in near silence, almost as if the two of them have so much to say the words crumple inwards upon themselves and fall out onto the road behind them, moving faster and faster, further and further away until they are gone completely. 

He stares straight ahead, fighting sleep. He’s been down I-40 once before, travelled this same route last time in a beaten-up Toyota Corolla he’d abandoned after crossing the border into New Mexico. He isn’t even sure how exactly he’d found Gibson Praise; something inside had called to him, showed him the way. It was the same thing he’d felt when he’d found Scully and William in Democrat Hot Springs without coordinates. 

His gut has never steered him wrong but that wasn’t what it had been; it was something inside him, something foreign and unfamiliar. 

Something alien.

He’d known there was something alien about William, too, even before he left. He’d felt it. He couldn’t explain it to Scully, and when he’d tried to it had only upset her. She wanted something normal so badly, something untainted by the X-Files, and she was determined to believe she’d found it in William. 

He’d wished he could have given that to her.

He still wishes it.

_ And then she had to give up William. _ His heart is bursting, aching with regret. The only light and joy he’d left behind and she’d given him up to strangers. He can barely process what that must have been like for her, how dangerous her situation must have gotten to even consider it. How impossible that decision would have been.

How it must have been absolutely, most assuredly, one hundred percent his fault.

Why is she even in this car with him? Out of obligation or desire? Does she blame him for having to give her baby away?

Does she blame him for having to give her life away?

His eyelids are getting heavy as the road continues in a straight line, stretching out into oblivion before him. His bladder is about to burst. He needs fresh air. 

Pulling the car to the side of the road and putting it into park, he pauses for a moment to gaze at her. She looks so peaceful right now, and he can’t help but lean over to gently kiss her cheek. 

After he relieves himself he’s confronted with yet another terrible piece of news. As if the past few days haven’t been hellish enough.

He gets back into the car, starts driving. Scully is awake now, staring straight ahead. He doesn’t want the car to fall into an oppressive silence again, he can’t bear it.

“Byers, Langly, Frohike… are they… dead, Scully?”

He hears her inhale sharply. She turns towards the window and lays her face against it. “Yes,” she answers him softly.

“How?”

She tells him, at least as much as she knows, and he shakes his head. They died honorably. It isn’t a comfort but it’s true. 

She lets the terrible news sit with him for a minute, then speaks again. “If you won’t tell me why we aren’t leaving the country, will you at least tell me where we’re going, exactly?”

“New Mexico, where I’ve been this whole time.”

“Okay… and then what? Where do we go after that, Mulder?”

“I haven’t thought that far ahead.”

She shifts in her seat a bit. After a few minutes she looks at her watch. “Well, anything outside of North America is officially off our option list now. I’m sure our pictures have been sent to every airport in the country.” She looks over at him. “I really hope you know what you’re doing.”

“Me too,” he says under his breath. He stares straight ahead but can sense her head turn, feel her glare. She turns back to look out the window. She’s pissed off and has a right to be. He wonders if she’s staying silent not because she agrees with any of his decisions but because he’s literally all she has left and she doesn’t want to fight with him.

“I’m sorry this is happening, Scully, all of it. You don’t deserve any of this.”

“No, I’m sorry,” she says, much to his surprise. “I wish I’d listened to you, Mulder,” she says quietly. “I wish things had been different. I wish I’d let you stay.”

He isn’t sure what to say. “I think it goes without saying that I wish I’d stayed, too.”

He’s suddenly aware it might come across like he’s blaming her for making him go, maybe even blaming her about William. He doesn’t want her to feel guilty about anything, nothing. He wishes he could absolve her of everything right here and right now but that would entail actually talking about difficult things. They don’t do that.

 “You were right, Scully.” He still believes it, even now. “With the information we had…” so much has happened since, and the danger is more real now than ever. Agent Crane was right there, in the FBI; it was him all along. Had Mulder stayed, he would most certainly be dead, and Scully and William right along with him. He shudders to think of it.

“And… I know it may not mean much right now, but I missed you more than I can say,” he says.

_ You and William _ , is what he means. But he cannot speak it. He cannot say their son’s name, not now. Not when things are so uncertain, so unsettled. She will talk about it when she’s ready.

“I missed you too, Mulder,” she replies. She reaches across the console to take his hand. He squeezes hers back. “Hey, can I drive for a while? You look tired.”

It’s the third time she’s asked, and the third time he will say no. They’ve almost arrived, anyway. Instead, he squeezes her hand again and doesn’t let go until they arrive at their destination.

She is his lifeline, and will be until their lives are over. Whenever that will be.

_ December 22nd, 2012. _

He shivers, and not from the desert chill still lingering inside the car.

  
  



	25. The Toothbrush

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Origin story for the mysterious second toothbrush that appears in Scully's bathroom when Mulder returns.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt from @fragilevixen
> 
> From the Angst/Fluff prompt list (first list)...I have TWO to bestow on you. 23. "What's cookin', good lookin'?" 96. "Can't you stay a little longer?" Order not specific.

 

  
He uses the key she gave him to enter her apartment. It feels like the first time, it feels like the millionth time. The moment the door swings open he smells something delicious: garlic and sage and maybe saffron?  _ Ahh, Scully.  _ His sense of smell has always been particularly attuned but ever since returning from the dead things seem to be taking a while to get back to normal.

“Mmm… What’s cookin’, good lookin’?” he says as he walks towards the kitchen, peeling his leather jacket off and draping it over a chair. He expects her to turn around give him a look of confusion, a raised eyebrow at his cheesiness. Perhaps a sigh of exasperation, thinking she looks like an elephant despite every bit of evidence to the contrary.

He does not expect Margaret Scully to turn around from her position at the range.

“Fox!” she greets him happily, setting down whatever utensil she’s stirring with, and wipes her hands on her apron. It’s Scully’s apron, of course. He gave it to her for Christmas a few years back. It looks like scrubs with fake blood smeared across the front.

“Oh… hey, Mrs. Scully!”

He’s a bit taken aback, not embarrassed, but simply unsure of how to behave around Scully’s mother. As far as he’s aware she’s been kept in the dark about everything involving his mysterious resurrection, the baby, even the status of his and Scully’s relationship.

He hugs her tightly, however, always happy to see her. She smells like  _ mom _ . He misses that.

“Dana told me you’d be coming,” she says, giving his upper arms an extra squeeze. “Dinner’s almost ready.” 

“Smells great.”

Mrs. Scully looks at him as if really seeing him for the first time. What has Scully told her about his miraculous return? How has she explained any of it? 

“It’s wonderful to see you,” she says, and he can see tears forming in her eyes. He can’t even imagine what she’s thinking right now, the machinations her mind must be performing to arrive at an answer that’s in any way satisfactory.

“I wish I could tell you how I’m even standing here,” he says with absolute honesty. “I wish I knew.” 

But she reaches out to touch his face, as if verifying his existence. “God works in mysterious ways, Fox,” is all she says. It appears to be all she needs. She nods to herself, then turns to busy herself in the kitchen again. For the first time in his life Mulder wonders if he’s sold Christianity short.

Presently Scully makes her appearance, radiant as always. He wants to tell her so; he wants her to know how beautiful he thinks she looks while she’s carrying their child. He wants to cross the room and take her into his arms, plant a huge kiss on her right in front of her mom. But she hasn’t given him permission to yet. 

“Hey, Scully,” he says awkwardly, shoving his hands in his pockets. 

This is all so stupid. Her mother just saw him enter her daughter’s apartment with his own key, and flirt with her in a way that would rival any 90s sitcom. Mrs. Scully gives them a look that, to him at least, indicates she knows he and Scully are fooling exactly no one.

“Hi,” Scully greets him. “Sorry for not calling, I didn’t know my mom was coming until she showed up at my door with food and practically forced me into the shower.” She mock-glares at her mother. Since the partial abruption she’s been house-bound and restless.

Maggie  _ tsks _ and turns around to stir whatever sauce she’s making. “Someone needs to take care of you, Dana,” she says. “You look like you could burst at any moment.”

Scully scowls. Mulder chuckles.  _ You look perfect, _ he mouths to her, and the scowl disappears as quickly as it appeared.

They sit and eat, and none of them talk about the paternity of the baby, none of them talk about the fact that they’d been at Mulder’s actual funeral three months prior. It should be uncomfortable, perhaps, but it isn’t; he enjoys watching Scully interact with her mother. There’s love, genuine love there. Witnessing it is special and rare.

After dinner he insists on cleaning up and putting away each and every dish while Scully and her mother chat at the table. He’s only starting to learn where things go in her kitchen, but it’s much easier than his own; more orderly and logical in her storage methods. As if he expected anything less.

After he finishes, Mrs. Scully stands abruptly and heads for the door. “I’d better get home now,” she says. “I’ll see you two later.” She gives Mulder a knowing smile over Scully’s shoulder as they hug, then is gone quicker than any mother has ever made herself scarce in the history of mothers.

He has the distinct impression she’s left them alone purposefully, and as he and Scully stare at each other, a million unspoken words floating between them like dark matter, undetectable, he thinks he knows why.

But then she smiles, and all of the questions and secrets seem to dissipate. Instead he’s just standing awkwardly at the door.

“I’d better go too,” he says, even though it’s the last thing he wants. He doesn’t want to wear out his welcome.

“Oh. Can’t you stay a little longer?” Scully asks. Her voice is small, nearly breathless. But Scully is strong. She doesn’t need him; she never has. She  _ wants _ him here.

“Sure,” he replies. “As long as you like, Scully.” 

_ Forever, if you ask me. _

“Will you stay the night?”

He tilts his head to one side, considering her request. Of all the questions Dana Scully has ever asked him, all the things she’s ever doubted since she’s known him, this is by far the most ludicrous.

“Of course.”

She smiles. Takes his hand, gently pulls him towards her bedroom. “Good, because I have something for you.”

He lifts his eyebrows a couple times, eagerly anticipating whatever she has in store for him. Whatever those pregnancy hormones are doing to her, he likes it a great deal. “I can say with a fair amount of certainty I’m game, Scully. Although your doctor said you should take it easy...”

She shakes her head. “Not in there,” she indicates the bedroom, “...in here.” She leads him into her bathroom and his confusion must be evident because she squeezes his hand reassuringly.

“Relax, Mulder,” she says. She leans down, as much as she’s able, and opens the cabinet below the sink, pulling something out. 

It’s a brand new red toothbrush. She holds it up triumphantly.

“Mine?” he asks.

“Yours,” she affirms. He takes it.

It’s the way they always do things: few words, if any. Everything is simply understood. With this small key to her kingdom she’s given him permission to stay. To really stay, here with her, whenever he wants to. It’s huge. It’s a mind-blowingly enormous step for them to take. But, as usual, it happens with little fanfare, almost as if expected.

“Thank you,” he says earnestly. He means it. He doesn’t want to let this moment pass them by so he grabs her by the waist and brings her close, right up against him, kissing her lips softly. They live inside it for a moment, enjoying the quiet, this sacred window of time they can share before he knows everything will change forever.

When they part, she looks up at him, a bit dazed. “Yeah?” she asks, almost unsure of herself.

“There’s nowhere I’d rather be, Scully,” he says. 

Maybe it’s just the pregnancy, or having him back again after all those months of being alone, but he can tell she’s about to start crying the way she has been a lot lately. He knows they’re happy tears, but it’s enough already.

“No crying, okay?” He takes her face in his hands, stops the tears with his thumbs. “Not tonight.”

She nods. “Sorry, I can’t seem to stop lately.” She sniffles and they both chuckle.

“Come on,” he says, tearing open his plastic-wrapped toothbrush. “Let’s get you to bed. I’m supposed to be taking care of you.”

They stand in front of her sink brushing their teeth side by side, never having had this, not quite anything like this, even in the weeks leading up to his abduction. He can physically feel his feet getting comfortable planted here on the ground, and it’s pleasantly surprising. 

He glances sidelong at her as she brushes and the corner of her mouth quirks up. She spits as demurely as possible as they both finish up, and when he turns to face her she brings her thumb to his mouth to wipe off a tiny bit of toothpaste. She smiles, takes the toothbrush out of his hand, and plunks it into the holder by the mirror right next to hers. 

They look at the pair of toothbrushes for a moment in silence. It seems like a small thing, a simple thing, but it isn’t. It signifies the intent he’s been unable to speak: that he is here with her for the long haul. He is all in.

Mulder reaches out to take her hand. It feels like home.

  
  



	26. “Why are you so jealous?”

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Takes place post (sort of) Never Again. Prompt from Sairie Fairy: #8 “Why are you so jealous?”

“It should have been you.” ****

Her voice is both groggy and unexpected as she pivots her head towards him on her hospital bed and he’s taken off guard. The only reason he’s here is to check up on her, to make sure she’s okay, not to actually face her. Her eyes are sleepy, unfocused, her face covered with bruises. 

He wants to kill Ed Jerse for hurting her like this. He wants to tear each finger from his stupid fucking hands and punch him in his dumb fucking face. Oh, and kick him in the balls for good measure.

“What?” he asks. “…Scully, what did you say?”

They haven’t spoken since the call, _the call_ that he’s now certain had sent her off on this ill-fated misadventure in the first place. She’d been pretty pissed at him. He has no idea where they stand, really.

She closes her eyes and turns her face away, seemingly asleep now. He isn’t sure she’s even aware she’d spoken at all. 

_It should have been you._

It should have been him, what? It should have been him on the case? It should have been him getting tattooed with a stranger? It should have been him attacked and nearly thrown into a fucking furnace?

There’s no way to know for sure what that asshole did to her. 

What she did with him. 

_Stop that._

He’s wondering now if they really were out on a date, just as he’d feared. He’s wondering if Ed Jerse kissed her. 

He’s wondering if Ed Jerse fucked her.

He feels ill and doesn’t know why. He wants to rage in frustration. _This is Scully, it’s just Scully, damnit._ Why does he care? Why does he feel this way?

_Fuck. Are you jealous? Why are you so jealous?_

He can’t help it, now he’s picturing it. Vivid images of some guy with his hands on her, with his mouth on her. On Scully.

He is jealous. He’s so jealous he’s finding it difficult to breathe.

_It should have been you._

It should have been him.

But there’s no way that’s what she meant.


	27. "I think the baby's coming."

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sentence Prompt from anon: "I think the baby's coming. It's too soon."

 

  
  


He squeezes her hips, wider now than last time. He’s been dead for months, and she’s been growing life; this improbable swell between them. He looks up at her as she rocks slowly, languidly, eyes closed. It’s like he isn’t even here, like she’s using him to get her off, a perfunctory middle man between herself and her orgasm.

He doesn’t mind. He’s lucky to be alive. He’s lucky she wants him inside her at all.

She comes, and her arms lock onto his shoulders as she grips him so hard it hurts. She moans as a stream of obscenities he isn’t used to hearing fly out of her mouth. _“Jesus… fuck… oh god… so good…”_

But then.

“Mulder...”

He knows her voice. If Scully ever wore a panic face she’d be wearing it right now. “What? What’s wrong?”

“I think the baby’s coming.”

 _Jesus Christ_. He has no fucking idea what to do. _Fuck._

He can see her eyes still popping as she slips off of him, rolling to her side next to him on the bed, legs askew. 

“Uh… okay, don’t panic,” he says, panicking. He jumps out of bed, begins pulling his clothes on. His little agent has gone off duty already; this scare having accomplished that just fine.

“It’s too soon,” she says thoughtfully, more calmly than she should. It’s freaking him out.

“Scully, I think we should get you to the hospital,” he says, his own voice an octave higher than usual. “Where are your clothes?”

“It’s okay, we don’t,” she says, shaking her head. Suddenly she starts laughing, quietly at first, then loud raucous laughter he hasn’t heard since he came back from the dead. For a moment he feels like he’s in his own personal episode of _The Twilight Zone_.

“Scully…?” he asks, hesitantly.

“False alarm,” she says. “My mistake, I’m sorry.”

“A-are you sure?” He eyes her exposed birth canal suspiciously, like he expects someone to come careening out at any second. “Y-you said the baby’s coming.”

“Yeah, I’m sure,” she says, reaching up, patting his face drowsily, her own cheeks flushed. “It wasn’t the baby. It was just me.”

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Full disclaimer, I was a little drunk when I wrote this. Also, I couldn’t pass up an opportunity to make this joke. At the end of the day, I am twelve.


	28. surprise kiss

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt from ellivia: Surprise kiss

He approaches her as she crouches down by the gravesite, her hair a flash of red among gray stones. He didn’t know she’d be visiting today. He comes occasionally, to pay his respects. A day doesn’t pass when he wishes he could have done more.

He sidles up beside her and she turns, startled.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“It’s okay.” She stands, eyes puffy and red. She’s been crying, of course she has. 

He isn’t sure how to behave so he puts an arm around her, tries to comfort her. He holds her for a couple of minutes and when she is calm again he speaks.

“I hope you know you're not alone in this, Scully.”

Her bottom lip quivers, and he’ll never know what possesses her, but she leans forward and presses a soft, chaste kiss to his lips. His eyes widen in shock.

She gives him a small smile. “Thank you, Melvin,” she whispers. As she walks away, he looks down at the grave, scattered sunflower seeds reminding him who she will always belong to, even in death.

  
  



	29. First Kiss

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt from @Sairie_Fairy: #1 First kiss please x

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those who requested a "sequel" to this, be sure to check out [Up in your arms](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23136556/chapters/55366612) which is a multi-chapter fic but this prompt is what started it. :)

 

  
  


 

She’d been here before so many times.

Not just in his apartment, the stale scent of sweat and aftershave as familiar as her own. But here, in this position of _which way do we go_. It was a choice she’d never made because they’d never been forced to make it. Perhaps they never would.

She’d opted to take the floor tonight, her back against the couch, and because of this Mulder had sprawled out across it, his arm resting just behind her shoulder. Every so often his fingers would brush her back and she couldn’t focus, she couldn’t think of anything other than his fingers touching her, so she turned her head ever so slightly to study him.

He hadn’t noticed her staring, as his eyes were fixated on the glow of the screen: some movie he’d picked that was far more interesting when she watched it in the reflection of his eyes. Even in his ridiculous sci-fi-fantasy films, the guy always got the girl. But never in real life, not in this life, as much as she wanted it to. She wanted to laugh at the irony: they were practically living a sci-fi fantasy and still, years later, nothing.

His collar was unbuttoned, tie loosened, shirt untucked. A half-drunk beer sat on the floor within his reach. Work Mulder was one thing, but Home Mulder was a far more elusive animal for her to witness in captivity. She imagined him doing this very same thing night after night regardless of her presence, and wondered if her being here meant anything, changed anything. 

She was so tired of this: of not being noticed by him, of waiting endlessly to know the truth. Seven years together and she felt like she knew him so well, but at the same time hardly at all. It was confounding. 

Perhaps it was the gentle brush of his fingers, or his reliable steady breathing behind her, but something had awakened inside her and she felt a bravery she didn’t recognize. At first she wanted to blame the six pack they’d been sharing but she knew she was not drunk, not at all; the Shiner Bock swam inside her like a friend, like someone she’d needed for years to tell her to go after the things she wanted, the things she deserved. Like Missy in her ear telling her she was worthwhile no matter how her parents made her feel.

“Mulder, can I ask you a question?”

He looked down at her. “Yeah.”

She took a deep breath, and then out it came. “Are you lonely?”

He blinked, surprised at this personal affront. She expected this reaction; they so rarely discussed their emotions with each other. “Why do you ask?”

She looked directly into his eyes and told him the truth. “Because I am.”

His expression changed just then, not to pity or sympathy but something else. She knew his face, every line, every pore. She knew it better than she probably should. And what she saw was complete and total understanding.

Her gaze fell, unable to muster the courage to hold his own, and landed on his arm instead as it rested on the edge of the couch. It enchanted her; the shape of his extensor digitorum, traveling from his wrist to the crook of his arm, the dimple it created where his elbow bent. His sleeve, rolled up and resting between bicep and forearm, where it always landed at the end of a brutal day. His skin: the tint of it, like the sand she’d trod to find a cure to save his life halfway around the world.

She’d lay awake night after night and thought of little else since then; those long hours spent in Africa when she’d feared for his life. It had felt like they still had such a long way to go to reach each other.

But there was no distance tonight, not this time. He was here, now. He was inches away from her, his aroma intoxicating, his breathing audible even over the sounds of the television. He was real and she was real and somehow she knew that this thing between them was real, too; this thing they’d denied themselves over the years was real and it would not go away, it would remain, lingering in the air like a cloaked spacecraft. 

She couldn’t see it, but it was real. In this she wanted to believe.

He hadn’t answered her question, perhaps wondering how to respond. She turned towards him from her position on the floor and her hand reached out to touch his forearm, her fingers curling around it. It felt so freeing, just making this decision to touch him, an active decision and following through with it. There was no reason, no excuse. 

This was it, this was the moment of no return, and it was no longer a choice but a compulsion. She couldn’t pretend the spacecraft didn’t exist. 

She wanted to be touched by someone. She wanted to be held by someone. And she wanted that someone to be him. 

“Mulder.”

She turned, and rose up onto her knees to face him. The remote rested beside his head on the arm of the couch and she took it, muted the television, dropped the remote. He looked at her with a look she couldn’t figure out, but it wasn’t a look that said _don’t._ It was the furthest thing from that look she could discern. So she leaned into him, all the way in, and she felt him inhale ever so slightly as she took the biggest risk of her life.

When their lips finally touched he kissed her back, and all the things she knew were wrong with the world disappeared from her mind, everything bad that had happened in their lives was simply gone, and what remained were Mulder’s lips pressed against her own, nothing but the sweet taste of victory. 

His eyes closed and she could hear a small sound from deep within him, the tiniest sigh of satisfaction, even relief. This was exactly the way she’d imagined it happening all these years, right down to the gentle gurgle of his fish tank beside them, ethereal green light surrounding them. Here, right here, is where she’d pictured it. 

The heavenly delirium of his mouth against hers thrilled her enough to spur her on, to part her lips and see what he would do. She expected him to go for it, wanted him to go further, to fill her mouth with his tongue and push her down to the floor, put an end to this persistent ache she suspected they’d both felt for years.

But he didn’t. He kissed her gently, almost reverently. Like he didn’t want to break her. Like he was holding something back.

She pulled away, a flush of uncertainty spreading from her head to her toes. 

“Say something,” she whispered. She pulled her hands together protectively, resting them on the couch between them.

His hand moved to cover her own, the warmth a comfort but still he did not speak. Suddenly a terror grabbed hold of her that perhaps she’d done something wrong, that maybe this was a mistake. Maybe they’d abstained all these years for an important reason and now she’d lose him forever.

“Mulder, speak to me.”

His eyes then revealed a new expression, and it was not hesitation or discomfort. It was not regret. It was absolute wonder. It was shock and amazement. It was discovery.

His mouth hung open, eyes softening. His voice cracked as he spoke. “I’m afraid... if I say something I’ll wake myself up,” he said, more quietly than she’d ever heard him speak. 

It didn’t feel real, any of it, although she knew it was. She smiled, taking his forearm, and with two fingers pinched it softly. He reacted but neither of them woke up, as she knew would be the case. She brought his arm up to her lips and kissed where she’d pinched him, just wanting to touch him, needing to feel the heat of him, wanting this more badly than she’d ever wanted anything in her entire life. Wanting him to know this was real.

He reached out and tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear, his hand curving, cupping her face, lingering there for a moment. He pulled her towards him and she prepared for another kiss, another step towards their nirvana, but instead he pulled his mouth close to her ear.

“Scully…” he whispered. “Are you sure you want this?” His voice hitched, hesitating, and she could tell he didn’t want to say the next part. But he did. “Are you sure you want… me?”

The idea that she could possibly want anyone other than Fox Mulder hadn’t occurred to her in years, and his humility in a moment where that was clearer than ever humbled her in turn. She was in awe of him, of his concern that her loneliness was perhaps misplaced.

“Yes, Mulder,” was all she could think of to say. _Yes, yes, yes. I will tell you yes until the end of our days._ “I only want you.”

She leaned back to read his face. There was a flicker in one of his mossy irises, the way he always looked when he was turning something important over in his mind, and for a moment she wondered if it was the answer he’d indeed wanted to hear. It was all she wanted to say to him and that he wanted her back was all she wanted to hear from him. 

His silence frightened her but she had to know. She had to. She took a deep breath and asked him. “Do you... want me?” 

He shook his head, incredulous. Sitting up, he shifted his body so she was locked between his thighs. He took her hand and laid it against his heart. It was absolutely racing.

“What do you think?”

She nodded. She felt dizzy with euphoria, that this was happening and what was only a dream a few seconds ago was now a reality, transforming before her very eyes. She’d never believed in the paranormal, and just as he’d slowly worked at convincing her of such over the years, this too, perhaps the most improbable, mysterious force of all, was coming to fruition. 

“Are you scared?” she asked. 

“Terrified,” he laughed. “Are you?”

“Yes,” she admitted quietly, because as long as the truth was coming out she may as well let him hear it all.

“Of what?”

“I don’t really know,” she said. _That I don’t know what I’m doing. That this could be a mistake. Of this entire thing, whatever it is, swallowing us whole._

“You know what I’m thinking about right now?” he asked. She shook her head. “I’m thinking about all the times I’ve been afraid before, all the times I’ve wandered into some dark, scary place… and how knowing you were right there beside me eased my fear.”

She grinned. “Having a flashlight helps.”

Laughing, he nodded, agreeing. ”You’re right.” He let go of her hand, moved both of his own to her face. She could see him studying it, as if he were seeing it anew. 

“I believe in us, Scully, wherever we go together,” he said. “I want to believe this thing between us is real, and good, and true.” 

She was happy, genuinely happy, and the emotion was so foreign to her she almost felt like crying. He wanted her. This was destiny, something cosmic, she knew it. It was moments like these her faith felt completely justified; in God, in love. In him.

She exhaled, slowly, attempting to control her emotions. “I want to believe that, too.”

He cocked his head, gave her that patented Mulder grin, and rubbed her cheek softly with a thumb. “Then let’s shine a light on this, Scully.”

This time, he leaned, and their second kiss was even better than their first.

  
  
  
  
  
  



	30. "I dreamed of you last night."

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt from @Baroness_Blixen: “I dreamed of you last night.”

 

  
  
  
  


_ “I want to speak to the writer.” _

Scully looks at him with that familiar gaze, the one that tells him  _ this case is over, Mulder.  _ Dr. Pollidori is in a squad car headed for prison. The Great Mutato is going to follow him.

“What would you change, Mulder?” she asks. “If you could?” She’s exhausted and indulgent, which is his favorite combination. It’s during these moments that he can get through to her.

“I’d change the circumstances that led to any of this,” he says, knowing it isn’t possible, but Fox Mulder is nothing if not an idealist. “I’d change that young man’s childhood to one that wasn’t so lonely. One where he wasn’t reduced to such drastic measures.”

None of this was Mutato’s idea, certainly. He’d been a young boy when the old man first spliced human with chicken, human with hog. Human with fly. 

None ever worked. Always just…  _ human _ .

“He was complicit, Mulder,” Scully says, ever the voice of reason. “He was present. Whatever his father’s intentions, the law will find him guilty.”

Mulder nods. “I know.” 

“I admire your compassion,” she says gently. “Especially in this line of work. The things we see… and here you are, still full of hope.”

He grins at her, but it’s a sad grin. There isn’t much else to say. He’s duty-bound. Mutato will be found a criminal in any court in the country, regardless of his childlike innocence.

Scully takes Mulder’s arm in that way she does when she’s hearing him, really hearing him. He gets like this sometimes, she knows. “Let’s go, okay? I think our job here is done.”

Their job, their job. Yes, this is their job, but his heart aches with the injustice of it. 

She walks him to their car and they drive back towards the motel, stopping at a diner nearby. He orders a turkey pot pie, she has a Cobb salad. He’ll remember the drop of blue cheese dressing on her lip that he refrains from wiping this time. Things are different now, somehow.

They part at the motel room doors as usual.  _ Knock three times _ , she tells him, as usual. Just in case he needs her. 

Mulder splashes water on his face, takes off his pants, settles onto the bed and flips on the television, which unfortunately features  _ Jerry Springer _ . He hits mute, lets his thoughts wander. Inevitably, they arrive at Scully.

_ What would you change, Mulder? _

He’d change a lot of things. He’d be brave, he’d tell her how he feels. He wouldn’t worry so much about consequences, about repercussions. He’d live his truth.

_ What would you change, Mulder? _

Mutato is on his way to prison, but what if he wasn’t? What if, instead, he was surrounded by friends? What if, instead, he was meeting his idol? What if he wasn’t lonely anymore?

_ What if Mulder wasn’t lonely anymore? _

The next day he and Scully stand in line at the airport terminal the same way they have surely hundreds of times before. Scully glances over at him.

“Mulder,” she says hesitantly. “Are you okay? You've been off all morning.”

His mind jumps, shifts. Something does feel off. Something happened between them last night he doesn’t quite remember.

Then like a flash, he does. He hears music all around them: Cher, maybe? A crowd of people. The disco ball lights scatter, dotting Scully’s face, making even more tiny freckles. 

He’s standing up. He’s looking everywhere but at her. He extends his hand and waits. All she has to do is take it. He’s been waiting years for her to take it.

_ Then… _

As if by magic she’s in his arms. He takes her by the waist and they dance, dance, dance. He holds her tight and she doesn’t let go. When she looks him in the eyes it feels like truth, like an answer. As usual, they need no words. 

He wishes it were so easy in real life.

He shakes his head. Shakes it off. Everything is technicolor now. It might take a few days before he even knows what’s real.

“Nothing,” he assures her. 

“Are you sure?” She looks at him quizzically.

He looks over, into her eyes, which are far more aquamarine than he remembers. 

“I just… I dreamed of you last night, that’s all.”

  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been wanting to do a fic about my take on PMP for a while now, and this was the perfect opportunity to do it. Early S5 felt so much like both of them wanting to make moves and failing, so the idea that the final sequence was really just Mulder's dream feels so appropriately UST-y to me.


End file.
